Joining Jackson at Corner Cafe

August 29th.

An Italian breakfast is something I had tried to emulate for my Breakfast World Cup. Unfortunately, what I managed to come up with (on two separate attempts) was not something I enjoyed particularly. In Group D, the Italian breakfast finished bottom, ranking behind the Costa Rican, the Uruguayan and, naturally, the English.

Now it would be time for an Italian man to feast upon the English breakfast. I had planned to meet up with Jackson Braghieri on his final day before leaving Brighton for good. His eventual destination: Salt Lake City, UT, to start the next stage of his post-university life.

I had been introduced to Jackson through a couple of my five-a-side football team mates who were both studying/working at Brighton University, and he was recruited by them to bolster our squad when numbers were reduced. He swiftly became a regular member of the team and, eventually, an indispensable one. 

Not only did he continue the fine tradition of Italian defending, but whenever regular goalkeeper Robin was unavailable, he could be counted upon to step between the sticks and leap about like a young Gianluigi Buffon (or Toldo, or Zenga).

Jackson has family in the US who have set him up with a job to be getting on with. He also as a result has pretty solid knowledge of US tourist hotspots, and so was able to make recommendations for Claire’s trip to the US. For anyone travelling to New York in the near future, he recommends taking a tour of the UN and visiting the Twin Towers museum.

Certainly one of the kindest guys I’ve met living in Brighton - and one of maybe only three people to provide me with a birthday card last year - Jackson will certainly be missed as he crosses the Atlantic for his great American adventure.

As Jackson was living in Whitehawk, I suggested the Corner Cafe as a venue - the cafe is situated on St. James’ Street in Kemptown and I was very familiar with its previous incarnations when I lived but minutes away a few years ago. There was one other reason for me suggesting the Corner Cafe, however; something on their breakfast menu had caught my eye…

And so, the breakfast:

Corner Vegetarian Breakfast

Baked beans, mushrooms, Lincolnshire veggie sausages, caramelized pear, egg, vine tomatoes and farmhouse toast.

Corner Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.95

As soon as I had read the menu, one item in particular leaped out at me. It was something I had never seen as a breakfast component before and something that I was especially eager to try out. It is fair to say that the caramelized pear was the second and more decisive reason for me choosing the Corner Cafe as the venue for our breakfast.

So let’s cut to the chase. The pear worked well flavour-wise, providing a level of sweetness similar to that offered by the baked beans. I would consider pear for future breakfasts; although it seemed a bit strange, it did not taste out of place. In this instance though, it could have been softer, having the texture of a potato that perhaps should have been boiled a few minutes longer. Slightly too firm to engage with with maximum joy.

Jurassic Park Rangers Hall of Famer

Solidity was an aspect that characterized this breakfast. The tomato, toast and mushrooms were all chunky. However, if the inclusion of pear had suggested that the breakfast was going to be taken me to places new, untravelled culinary shores, these items showed me that this was the extent of this thinking outside the box. No additional flavoring had been given and, like the pear, the tomato felt as though it could have been softened a little longer.

The sausages were nondescript and bland, offering little more than solid stodge. Variation was offered up by the chunky toast that was pleasantly fluffy, and in their chunkiness the mushrooms were bursting with juice. Further moisture came from the solitary egg whose yolk’s oozing flow was decent.

It was the beans that were the highlight of the dish. Sitting proudly in their own little bath, these beans were rich in taste, pleasingly viscous and fantastically abundant. The richness helped mask the deficiency of flavor that presided elsewhere in the dish.

While the breakfast here at the Corner Cafe offered the suggestion of a fresh start to fastbreaking with its inclusion of the pear, on the whole it was merely business as usual. Thankfully, I can safely say that Jackson’s jaunt to the US will provide much more refreshing and exciting flavours. He will probably be hard pressed to find caramelized pear on the breakfast menus of Utah, however.

Function: did what was required  - 3/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: varied from average to delightful - 3/5

Value: needed more effort for this cost - 2/5

Presentation: neat bean bath but crammed plate - 3/5

Venue: spacious but staff forgot Jackson's drink - 2/5

Overall: without the pear, it wouldn't be worth much discussion - 3/5

Eating with Ellie, dining with Dan at Redwood

August 8th

I try to keep my breakfast outings strictly mano y mano. This means that I should have a deeper pool of people from which to select fastbreaking companions from. However, there are certain special occasions where you can’t go eating with one person without another.

This was one such occasion. It would have been criminal of me not to go for a breakfast without both Ellie Williams and Dan McEvoy; two lovely folk who had for the past year or so been living, working and doing amazing things in South Korea.

South Korea must be an exciting country to live in. Alongside the occasional MERS scare, Ellie and Dan have been getting to grips with a completely new culture, complete with a different alphabet, its own legends and wildlife.

For example, when you are out for walk in the UK and hear a rustle in the bushes, one of the most exciting animal options you can hope to encounter is a badger. I told Ellie and Dan about the time I was up walking past the County Hospital one night when from out of a raised bed flew a discombobulated badger. It plummeted to the pavement before darting away into the darkness.

Dan was able to trump this tale, however. On a walk through a forest in South Korea, he and his party heard a mysterious rustling sound. Later pondering led the group to believe that the rustling could…could…have been…none other…than…a bear.

They have bears in South Korea!

Not only bears. They have tigers too, possibly with huge glowing eyes. Ellie was told a story from a local about glowing lights spotted in the forests of the night known as tiger lights that were believed to be the eyes of tigers.

It was a great pleasure to catch up with Ellie and Dan, particularly as I was able to chat exclusively to them rather than sharing them with a pub full of people as I had done the previous evening. They have that winning combination of being softly friendly and excitingly interesting.

This adventure in Korea is just the tip of the excitement iceberg, though. They have ambitions to travel further, to India, and to tackle projects in the future; a place to set up camp in France, a collaborative music project across the globe. They’ve got many pies baking at the moment, and it may be that even more exciting pies have been put into the oven since I last spoke to them. Whatever they end up doing, they are sure to have a lot of fun and look darn good while doing it.

With so much going on, both in the present and further down the road, their visit to England was a great opportunity to get back in touch with their roots and old acquaintances, be they good friends or homely meals.

And so, the breakfast:

The Weekender Breky

2 dippy eggs, seasoned chewy brown bread, grilled tomato, 1 grilled garlic mushroom, quarter of an avocado, 2 vegy sausages and a side of mustard mayo + brown sauce.

The Weekender Breky - £7.50

Well. I’m not sure how I feel about the spelling of that at all. Despite this, the presence of one particular item quickly set me at ease...

For me, there are fewer foods more homely than eggs and soldiers. So much so that I can’t remember the last time I ate them - they’ve certainly not appeared on my plate in adulthood. Consequently, when presented with my eggs, sitting neatly on their “hendelabra” (this word will catch on), I was unsure how to approach them. I couldn’t recall having ever removed the top of a soft boiled egg before. What if it went wrong?

Fortunately, Ellie seemed to know what she was doing, and after observing her method closely, I gave the tops of my eggs a soft whack before carefully taking the knife to them. It was a technical process requiring surgical levels of calm, but once it had been accomplished, the eggs were laid open and ready for dipping.

Revitalised by their Korea move

I have been conflicted as to whether eggs and soldiers are a legitimate food to buy at a cafe. On the one hand, they - like cereal and porridge - are so breathtakingly simple that it would feel like a waste of money to order them (I’ve seen the prices of cereal and porridge in some cafes and they’re often very ugly indeed). On the other hand, they can be a tad fiddly to prepare, and so may warrant you paying someone else to prepare them for you. Oh, I just don’t know.

Fortunately, Redwood eased my troubled mind by putting some effort into making the eggs and soldiers feel like a special event. The soldiers were drizzled with olive oil, at once distinguishing them from the simple buttered toast of my childhood. Combined with eggs that were cooked to runny perfection, these were a great success. Also cooked to perfection was the tomato, which came in that ideal and blissful state between firmness and mushy pulp.

Similar efforts had been made with other components to make them feel more special and, more importantly, taste better. The avocado had been seasoned with paprika and the mushroom had been grilled in garlic. It was even served with the chopped cloves of garlic it had been grilled with, adding another vibrant dimension of flavour to the plate.

The only let down on were the sausages which were bland and lacking in character. The only upside to these was that they presented an opportunity for me to use the mustard mayo that had been provided which lent them a little integrity.

It is not often that you find something that feels unique in a Brighton breakfast, and it is always exciting when that unique item is integrated seamlessly into a collection of oft-used favourites. The eggs and soldiers fitted in well but also made the breakfast feel twice as homely as it otherwise would - a fact that is especially important considering the lack of baked beans on offer. This lack and the uninspiring sausages were the only shortcomings that I could identify with this breakfast. Oh, and the spelling of “breky.” That kind of tomfoolery is never going to fly, no matter how good the food is.

Function: eggs and soldiers conjure warm memories  - 5/5

Adherence to Canon: No

Taste: largely vibrant and exciting - 4/5

Value: significant fare for a significant amount - 3/5

Presentation: both homely and chic - 4/5

Venue: calm, friendly, has a big chessboard - 4/5

Overall: only minor faults held this delighful dish back - 4/5