Indian with Ian at the Temple Bar

January 17th.

Due to the excesses of the festive period, I usually reduce my drinking habits in January. Last year, the plan was to reserve drinking to “special occasions,” a term to significantly cut things back while remaining flexible enough to allow impromptu good times. This belt-tightening is something I will be enforcing again this year.

My brother, Ian, has his birthday on January 10th. When it came around this year, I was still reeling from two weeks spent in deepest, darkest Cymru and was not feeling up to a dash to the Home Counties (I say dash, the journey would have involved multiple replacement buses) to pat an inevitably hungover younger brother on the back before heading back to Brighton in preparation for a first day back at work.

I don’t see Ian as often as I would like to, largely due to geography and my insatiable social scheduling. He’s a busy lad himself, working at Frimley Park Hospital by day and working on an Open University degree in computing whenever he gets his head down.

As it stands, he could well be on course to be the first McIntosh on this wing of the family to come out of uni with a first, leaving me and my mum’s 2:1s in the dust. This would be a particularly ace outcome considering that Ian has not previously been one for academia - he decided that college was not for him after the first year. Fingers crossed he keeps up the good work.

Fortunately, business brought my brother down to Brighton this past weekend, allowing me opportunity to celebrate his birthday belatedly. This, according to my mantra, was a “special occasion,” and that Saturday evening, the beer (and Ian’s good friend, Captain Morgan) flowed liberally alongside board-games and poker.

We had decided that on Sunday we would go and see The Force Awakens, as Ian is a big Star Wars fan but, as impossible as it sounds, had yet to see the new film. I had seen it before Xmas but thankfully it is one of those things that I'd probably be happy to rewatch again and again and again.

Our original plan was to get up nice and early and head down to the Harvester above the Sealife Centre. Here, an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet is served that I thought would be a great test for the McIntosh appetite. The only drawback is that this breakfast is only served between 9 and 11. Due to inclement weather and a 3am bedtime, this was not logistically possible.

Fortunately, I had been tipped off about a breakfast venue close to my flat that would be able to offer something a little different to the usual that would be right up my brother’s street. With this in mind, we eventually stepped out into the cold afternoon and headed to the Temple.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Full Indian

Spicy scrambled eggs, batate ambade, vegetable pakoras, chilli beans & roast cumin tomatoes. Served with naan, date & tamarind sauce and spicy ketchup.

Vegetarian Full Indian - £9.50

A bar encountered early on a Sunday afternoon is often a delightful place; quiet, homely and spacious where normally it would be intensely raucous and brash. So to was the Temple Bar, transformed into a location of contemplation and reflection by the dying light of the weekend. The music was relaxing, the staff were friendly.

The Temple Bar hosts food from Curry Leaf Cafe. So far, nothing too surprising; there are plenty of pubs and bars in Brighton that have guest kitchens providing food. Highly regarded eateries such as La Choza and Pizzaface can be sampled while drinking in other establishments in the city. What changes things slightly here, however, is that they do not just offer their regular fare but some special brunch items too (which as far as I can see differ from what is available at their own place).

The Vegetarian Full Indian offers traditional elements of the cooked breakfast prepared in the manner of Indian cuisine, alongside elements of Indian cuisine that sit aptly alongside established figures of the canon.

Possibly full up at this point.

Here, great effort had been made to take the concept of scrambled eggs and beans away from the quick and easy stylings they are normally served with. This reimagining was carried out well, and both felt and tasted comfortable served alongside the fried goods. The tomatoes had undergone much less of a transformation, but the seasoning stood them in good stead to mingle their juices with the dumplings.

Batate ambade are deep fried, spiced mashed potato dumplings, operating somewhere between the hash brown and bubble & squeak. Although unfamiliar, these fitted the cooked breakfast well and would have not tasted out of place alongside more traditional English fare.

It was left to the vegetable pakoras to provide that integral crunch and they did not disappoint. These were just the right kind of crispy to provide the kind of heart warming that fried food does best (interpret that as you will), yet the flavours of the vegetables within remained with gusto.

In some ways, naan could be more useful than toast when it comes to the plate of a cooked breakfast. They are ideal for mopping up the spilt effluvium of generous eggs or tidying away the remaining sauce of an over-eager fastbreaker. In this instance, they provided me opportunity for sampling the delectable sauces that helped this breakfast stand out further from contemporaries following condiment tradition.

My brother opted for the meaty option and experienced spiced streaky bacon instead of the batate ambade - bacon that he pronounced as some of the most magical (my words, not his) he had ever tucked into. There certainly was something magical about the way two culinary styles were fused together so seamlessly with this breakfast to create a combination that felt natural rather than forced. Here, then, was a new place of worship for this intrepid fastbreaker.

Function: comforting fried food with enlivening spices - 5/5

Adherence to canon: Yes

Taste: - delicious, although perhaps one-dimensional spicing? - 4/5

Value: the only downside was how dear the price was - 2/5
Presentation: stylish silver dishes, although would benefit from a bigger plate - 4/5

Venue: Ian liked every song they played in this bright and airy bar - 4/5

Overall: a breakfast fit for worship - 4/5

Ian wearing his Robe of Worship (+1 to all fastbreaking checks)