Time out with Tara at The Farm

February 28th.

Often in this blog, my fastbreaking has been a direct response to a deep existential crisis, also known as hangover vulgaris. It is an efficient solution to such times when the body is reduced to a frail and quivering wreck, and the mind wanders lost in the aching caverns of the skull. This was to be another one of those rescue missions. I was stuck in a dank spiritual gulch and need guidance back to my pastoral home. You see, the night before, The Red Diamond Dragon Club had played a gig at an event where some of us had felt that we'd been treated rather shoddily by the organisers. Some of us took to the bar in an attempt to quench our fiery anger, and once the headline band had finished we were able to retrieve our gear and head out into the night. This did not signal the end of our evening though; Tim's cousin, Tara Huzar, invited us to come to the Mash Tun, the pub in which she worked, as she had been unable to come to the gig earlier. Cue several more pints, some free shots, a crucial trip to Buddies, and a cut finger on the way home.

Unsure of the real blood/fake blood ratio

Somehow during all of this I managed to arrange to go to breakfast with Tara the next morning. She's quite busy and elusive, working at both the Mash Tun and at a local tailor (a maker of suits to the locally well-to-do) to balance the books, as well as frequently mislaying her phone. As a result I was determined to seize the opportunity at the time to schedule in some fastbreaking. There was a brief window before Tara started work again the following morning where breakfast could be eaten and so a valuable lie-in was sacrificed.

I've known Tara for a few years, ever since she first came to visit Tim as a prelude to studying at Brighton University. She is bubbly, able to chat with enthusiasm, and is always full of energy, even after a long bar shift and post-work drinking. She is also a great aficionado of cabbage. Is there a connection here? Is that why bubble and squeak is named as it is? The best take-away cabbage in Brighton is, according to Tara, available at Kebab Knight up on Lewes Road, and she is known as a regular elsewhere near her flat due to her regular cabbage requests. She recommended Kimchi as one of the finest forms of cabbage eating available, which I might hopefully be able to find a space for in my Breakfast Blog World Cup in a few months time. I had hoped to discover that kimchi was the inspiration for the Hell is for Heroes' track 'Kamichi', but careful research showed that this was in fact the name for either a Rwandan R&B artist or a South American bird, also referred to as the Horned Screamer. Not cabbage then. Unfortunately for Tara, the Farm did not offer cabbage as an option with their breakfast dishes.

And so the breakfast:

Veggie Farm Breakfast

Eggs, veggie sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and white or granary toast

Veggie Farm Breakfast - £7

I had been recommended the Farm by several other friends and so it was high on my list of places to visit. At first glance it looked like a lovely venue; it was decked out with hefty rustic wooden furniture and was quite light and airy, with only the smallest of embellishments such as holly on the light fittings. It had a good homely feel, suiting its name, but all this would be for nothing if the food was not fit Old McDonald himself (he had a lot of animals on his farm, and so adequate sustenance was definitely a must).

Bright-eyed and bushy tailed (somehow)

It started out pretty well. The beans were like a tractor of taste, ploughing down my tastebuds with a brutal richness, full of all the salty tomatoey force I could have wished for. These were some of the best baked beans I had ever tasted, and had a heartiness that could not be rivalled by any other beans I could remember. To reference my last blog post, they were Hyppia.

When thinking of farms and food, eggs, tomatoes, and farmhouse bread may well crop up, and fortunately these too were good enough for McDonald. The eggs' dual components provided a good contrast, with soft but firm whites accompanying thick flowing yolks. The toast was crunchy and invigorating, and the tomatoes felt fresh with an edge to their juiciness.

This was all well and good, but unfortunately the arch-farmer would have been disappointed with the fleshy components on his plate had he been eating at the Farm. Both the sausage and the mushrooms failed to maintain the standard set elsewhere in this breakfast. The sausages had a great chewy solidity to them, but sadly this was offset by a tragic blandness. The mushrooms' texture also was great, smooth and juicy, but the flavours there were subtle to the point of almost non-existence.

It was these disappointing components that really brought the meal down for me. The Farm is right next to Bill's, and in order to be worth a visit it really needs to either offer something completely different, something considerably cheaper, or just do what it does with exceptional quality. Unfortunately it doesn't do any of these things, only really offering an escape from busyness and pretension. At this current pricing you should expect a little more than this, and so it is difficult for me to think of a situation where you would favour this venue over its illustrious neighbour. One could use this as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture if one was prone to pretension, and as the Farm offers little in the battle against pretension there seems to be nothing else I can do:

The manner in which The Farm is dominated in the field of fastbreaking works as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture.

Function: hearty and homely in part - 3/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: not enough of this - 2/5
Value: high price, low yield - 2/5
Presentation: spaced well on the plate,  - 3/5
Venue: lovely homely farm aesthetic - 4/5

Overall: E - I - E - I - oh well - 2.5/5

An appointment with Amo at Marion's Cafe

January 25th.

Toast and marmite. A most glorious combination. If pressed for time, my ideal breakfast is two slices of toast and marmite with a glass of cold orange juice. The contrast of the marmite's bitterness and the sharp sweetness of the orange. The melting of the spread or butter into the bread, the crunch of the toast giving way and falling away in your mouth like a collapsing arctic coastline. Mmm. Heavy heady flavours. Yet the amount of marmite one uses can be problematic for some. Spread too much on and it can become an overwhelming experience. Spread too thinly and there's not enough on your plate to make much of an impression. You've got to be careful with marmite. Getting the balance right is a fine art.

I personally don't have this problem, as for me there is no such thing as too much marmite. Canada also doesn't have this problem, but for different, more sinister reasons. I have been beset by a similar issue though with writing; recently I was struck with the writing bug and inspired to work heavily on a story I have been hacking away at. This was great, but it has taken me away from this breakfast blog. It was good to have a break from the fastbreaking, as too much focus on writing about this one topic can burn me out, but now returning to it, a month on from the last breakfast I ate, and my notes appear like a foreign language to me.

Take these scribbles for instance:

"Pregnancy vitamins good for growing hair > Tina Fey > Big Momma > Water > Fave Drink"

I can remember that Amo had said that her favourite drink is water, but couldn't remember the links backwards. A swift bit of internet research revealed that Fey was in a film called Baby Mama, linking with the pregnancy vitamins, but still the anecdote trails runs cold for me. I would imagine that Amo would be able to piece together this puzzle, not least because she brought the subjects up, but also because she has the incredible skill of being able to draw reference and link to pieces of conversation from much earlier on in the day with uncanny ease. Sometimes she's almost as good as Poe's Dupin. Twin this with her indomitable knowledge of pop culture and celebrity and you have a very useful member of a competitive quiz team.

Amo wanted to pay a visit to Marion's Cafe as she remembered having some incredible fried potato there once before, and wanted to see if they were still serving such delights up. I had walked past Marion's many times on my way to and from football training at Preston Park, and I was excited to have the opportunity to finally see what it was like inside. My guess was that it would be a classic greasy spoon, and as we made our way there my fingers were crossed that my hunch would prove to be well founded.

My hunch proved to be well founded. It was a classic greasy spoon set-up with two particularly endearing factors. The most immediately noticeable one was the Liverpool shrine behind the counter; when going to order breakfast our gazes were met with prints of Dalglish, Barnes, and Fowler, hanging above a shelf holding a large figurine, possibly of Steven Gerrard, wielding a Liverpool flag as though it was a gladiatorial trident. Pinned to the shelf was a large, bright red scarf, burning with all the passion of the denizens of the Kop. It was nice to be in a cafe that wore its heart on its sleeve.

The second endearing factor was Marion herself. I didn't get to meet Joe in the last cafe I went to but there was no avoiding Marion, she was standing right behind the counter. She was wonderful. Within 5 seconds she had forgotten what I had just ordered (whilst elsewhere demonstrating a great memory for the orders of cafe regulars), she assembled my coffee with all the dexterity and grace of a rugby prop, and finally forgot to give me cutlery and a serviette whilst giving these to Amo shortly beforehand. It was all incredibly exciting. Would I be served what I asked for, or would I be presented with a steak and a stack of waffles?! I waited with bated breath.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian

Egg, 2 vege. sausages, hash browns, mushrooms, beans or tomatoes, toast

Vegetarian - £5

Phew! All present and correct. Marion had done her job, conveying my order to the kitchen, and done it well. It was a decent amount for what I'd paid, but how did it taste? Had Marion translated the longing that burned away in my eyes into a request to the chef to make the most delicious breakfast the cafe had ever served?

Ultimately it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some components were just what I was after, and others disappointed me with their indolence. For every plus point there was a counter-acting minus, nullifying any good work that had been done in the kitchen.

Marion is visible in the upper frame

There had been some overcooking. The toast, a single slice of white bread, was soft but had a slight burn to it. The mushrooms had been fried in oil and were left without much taste at all. Both components were the victims of cooking too swiftly and at too high a temperature. This may well have been the fate of the sausages too, which had pleasantly crispy exteriors which encased a mushy and vague vegetable interior.

There was heartiness to be had though. The beans in particular were delicious, providing a taste that was warm and salty like a tearful hug. The hash browns were impressively sized, and hit similar notes to the beans in a more wholesome way. Here the crispiness complimented a good taste, rather than masking a poor one.

The egg had a pleasantly thick albumen, but the casing of the yolk was perhaps slightly too solid, as it exploded out sideways following a confident probing. The taste was satisfying in a methodical way, but may have been disappointing if it had been on a plate surrounded by flavours of a higher quality.

There were positives to be had in this breakfast, but overall it was more Sotirios Kyrgiakos than Sami Hyppia. In other, non-Liverpool FC terms, the breakfast was hit and miss, though largely functional, rather than brilliantly memorable (I might have to start using "Hyppia" as an official breakfasting term). I greatly enjoyed my visit to Marion's Cafe, but in a manner similar to my enjoyment of John Barnes' rapping; there was a whimsy to it, verging on novelty, and it certainly couldn't lay claim to critical success or getting my world in motion.

Function: not enough doing it for me - 2/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: lots of flavours AWOL - 2/5
Value: cheap - 3/5
Presentation: arrayed decently, no overlap - 3/5
Venue: the world needs more Marions - 4/5


Overall: Marion, you'll never walk alone, but there is room for improvement - 2.5/5

Catching up with CJ at Joe's Cafe

January 19th.

The day had finally come. It was something I had been putting off for a little while, and rarely does a trip to a particular cafe for breakfast to write about it have much gravity. But when you've been hearing about the refurbishing of a place, have had friends actively working to start something up, and you are aware of how much has been invested in it, and how such a cafe has become people's lives, then, then there's a wee bit of gravity. And you can't just go rushing into somewhere for breakfast when there's some gravity involved; you've got to wait and let the gravity get its act together, and have all the objects stop floating around in space and settle down on the ground. Then it is apt to go for a breakfast and chronicle your time there. 19/01/14 was when the time was right for me to go, with Santiago, to Joe's Cafe.

I would also be going for breakfast with CJ Hopkinson, recently returned to Brighton and sadly without her dog, Percy. It was her that originally got me into the whole "meeting up with people for coffee" thing that was an influence on the formation of this breakfast project, and so it was great that she was back in town and around to do some fastbreaking with. She is also one of the best people I know for chattering on about random idiosyncratic esotericisms. An' shit.

Like Extreme Ironing. As someone who enjoys fun and games such as tree-climbing, as well as being well-versed in the homely arts, I would have thought this would be a true calling for her. Apparently not. She would like to have an ultra-foldable ironing board if she was to embark on this pursuit. Foldable not so much in the style of a folding bike, but foldable like one of these extending boxing gloves. What is that form of extending called? If anyone knows, please post the answer at the bottom of the blog. If anyone would like to sort out a Kickstarter campaign to create one of these ironing boards for CJ that would be great too.

We also had a nice wee chat about live performance, particularly music and comedy, and how important improvisation is. A live performance is a singular event and it is apt and correct for it to offer something different, something singular, from the recorded performance. As well as doing this, improvisation illustrates how adept the performer is in their chosen field, if they are able to offer something that is enjoyable and entertaining that they have created on the fly. CJ recently saw Paul Foot perform in Brighton, and in a set that seemed to be half planned, half improvised, it was the improvised half that shone the brightest. It is the importance of improvisation that means that I will always rate Ross Noble higher than Bill Bailey in the stand-up arena, despite the obvious skill and intelligence that the lovely Mr. Bailey possesses. From what I've seen of their live DVDs, Bailey reuses jokes and songs time and time again, whereas Noble loves nothing more than going off on an audience-inspired tangent. Bill Bailey might be a lovelier chap, but I'd rather see Ross Noble in the flesh.

Just like Bill Bailey, Joe's Cafe had a lovely feel to it (that was my attempt at an improvised link). It reminded me of one of my favourite pubs in Brighton, the Barley Mow, which feels more friendly and inclusive than any pub I've ever been to, catering to all tastes and ages. The only thing Joe's needs is a good collection of board games and you've got the cafe equivalent. It's quite small, so there's not much space for wild dances of celebration, but that's a minor quibble. They've also decided to use the word "breaky" on their menu, rather than using the spelling "brekkie". I would personally go for the latter, as their choice of spelling has some rather unsavoury non-breakfast connotations for me... Whether or not this is a minor or major quibble though is a matter of taste.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Breakfast

 Veggie sausage, portabello mushrooms, toast, beans, slow roasted tomato, fried egg

Veggie Breakfast - £5.50

As Santiago has never met Lynsey, it would again fall to him to come to my aid; the Passepartout to my Phileas Fogg. He also drew a picture of CJ for the blog. I'm not sure why he gave her a Viking helmet, I guess that must be artistic license.

It is very nice to be asked to write the food review again for this blog. I have been lucky to write about two very delicious breakfasts! Let me describe why!

First of all, I think that there was some great seasoning here. There was some oregano involved, and pepper, with the tomato, eggs, and mushrooms. Yum! The tomatoes and mushrooms were religious. Their textures were fleshy, and along with this passionate flavouring, they were strong; I think the word English people use is lush, like the power of the smell that comes from the Lush shop near North Street. Slow roasting the tomato and using Portabello mushrooms made an impact.

Unsure about this Viking helmet

The eggs and the potato were cooked very well also, with the egg white  having a nice shiver to it, with the yolk flowing over it like the waves on the beach. The potato reminded me of good English chips. These were good to have as there were lots of fleshy and juicy things on the plate that need something to soak them up.

Oh man, and the sausage! Again another great sausage! I wonder if they have been Brighton Sausage Company sausages? This was another expert one, meaty and peppery. Estupendo.

And then, yes, two very English things! Beans on toast! Did you know that 75% of the world's baked beans are eaten by the British? Crazy! These beans had what James calls a very good tang. The toast was lovely as well, juicy from being given butter before served, but also crisp as well, from being toasted well. The crisp toast was great, as it was a different texture to the other foods. What wonderful food.

Thanks, Santiago. I don't think I know any more chefs, so that'll probably be the last we hear from him for a while, unless I take him for a breakfast at some point. Who knows? In any case, he's done a fine job writing here. I should just highlight the joy of receiving bonus potatoes which were not mentioned on the menu, as well as the jolly presentation of toast, which formed either a heart or the ace of spades depending on how sentimental/into card games you are. Lord knows what it looks like if you're into sentimental card games, but it probably look nice all the same.

Joe's Cafe is a place with warmth that hits you immediately, and the effort that the people there are going to to make it an engaging cafe really comes across strongly. As soon as they realise that they need to change their spelling of "breaky" there'll be no stopping them...

Function: smile inducing and cockle warming - 5/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: great mix of textures and flavours - 5/5
Value: good price for quality food - 4/5
Presentation: looks purdy, with extra cute toast delivery 5/5
Venue: lovely and cheerful, only lacking in extra space - 4/5


Overall: an udder superb place to visit around Seven Dials - 4.5/5

Entertaining Elliot at the Cow

January 12th.

It was time to get back into action. It was the Sunday morning after the first full working week of 2014. The people of Brighton were recovering, it would seem. The streets surrounding Seven Dials were largely deserted. The roads were relatively quiet. The Cow was mainly empty, but for Elliot Tume and a staff member who would welcome an excuse to fire the coffee machine up.

It felt apt that I would be seeing my first breakfast of the new year with one of my newest acquaintances, in a venue where another one, Joe, was working as chef. It was all very exciting. The Cow was a venue I'd walked past several times down Dyke Road towards Churchill Square and all of those wonderful, wonderful shops. It had caught the eye, and my associates I had spoken to about it were complimentary in their reporting. The Cow was the place to start 2014's fastbreaking. It felt right.

Elliot had not read any of my blog previously, but said that he expected the experience to be "very The Trip esque." I am sadly yet to watch any full episodes of that programme, but I fully expect it to be as enjoyable as eating a big cooked breakfast. I decided to try to work my best 'dishevelled Steve Coogan' look though, in an attempt to live up to Elliot's expectation.

Elliot is a very friendly chap who I met last year through mutual friends in The Knights Project; an adept local folk group with an especially adept accordion player. The band is comprised of lovely people, and unsurprisingly Elliot fits that mould also. He has only been living in Brighton for a relatively short while, having finished studying film at uni. He quickly fell into that trap that many of us do; when you spend years fully occupied with studying or working on something you love it is very easy to turn your back on it once you have finished. For Elliot, his film-watching took a back seat to other things, and I too successfully managed to neglect reading and writing for some time after finishing my BA and MA respectively. It is a new year though, and a time for us all to sit down and think, hey man, this time round I'm going to focus and concentrate on doing the things I love doing, and not faff around so much, with more sleep and better eating so that I'm not so drained when I get back from work. As a man who works up in London (although I'm not sure you can really label it as work if there's an X-Box in the office), Elliot understands the devastating effect that the long-distance commute can have on one's evening life.

The new year is also a time for changes, not just cultivation. This is something that Elliot seems to be quite good at, as he admits to being prone to determined acts of life-changing character, for their own sake rather than for any loftier motive. It was through this propensity that he became a vegetarian, and it was very interesting to chat to a fellow vegetarian with motives slightly different from my own. There are many good arguments for becoming vegetarian. Those most often cited are the moral argument and the health argument, (here is a paper that might be interesting, and it also includes a feminist argument as well) but I would like to quickly mention two other arguments that I have noticed apply since becoming vegetarian myself. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly in this age of austerity, food is much cheaper when you're not buying meat. Secondly, and perhaps more pleasantly, washing-up is largely easier when you don't have to contend with the greasy, fatty oozings of meat in pans and on grills. When it comes to purchasing a cooked breakfast, this second point isn't so important, but every now and then point number one can make a difference.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

2 fried eggs, beans, veggie sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes with toast

Vegetarian Breakfast - £7.95

I was initially worried about writing about the food at the Cow, due to the fact that the chef of said food may well read what I have to say. That is why I have outsourced the writing of this portion of the blog to my good friend Santiago. Santiago likes eating quite a lot, and has happily agreed to step in to the firing line whenever my opinion might be compromised. It is fortunate that Santiago has exactly the same political leanings as me as far as breakfasts are concerned, and he is not afraid to speak his mind. Without further ado, I shall pass control of the keyboard over to mi amigo, Santiago.

¡Hola! It is a pleasure to play a part in my friend's blog, which I have enjoyed reading quite a bit since I have met him. In Spain, where I used to live, we did not have so many breakfast like these, but I have grown to love them so much whilst living here in Brighton, almost as much as I love Guinness!

The breakfast looked good to me, a bit like Fernando Torres. I was impressed with the layout, and with the separate pot for the beans. I could eat it a little like tapas! But, I wondered, will it do the job like Fernando Torres at Liverpool, or will it be more like Fernando Torres at Chelsea?

Veg for veg's sake

The mushroom was the first thing I sampled and it was good! It was mucho juicy, like some kind of super barbeque mushroom. Jajaja! There was a lot of juiciness all across the plate really, in particularly with the baked beans (muy rico!) and the tomatoes, which had a very pleasing texture and would have worked well in last year's Tomatina which me and my friend Cockleberry went to. Crazy!

As well as being very juicy and moist, the breakfast was seasoned well, with lots of exciting peppery flavours coming through. The tomatoes shared this with the potatoes which were soft, and the sausages, which were quite meaty both in texture and taste. They were surprisingly stodgy for a vegetarian sausage, and though I haven't had many of these since moving here, they were unlike any I had before in a English cafe. Yum! The eggs too were expertly seasoned, taking the tastes which were crafted well, with soft yet solid white and nice thick flowing yolk, and raising them to a new level of tasty.

The toast was a good slice of baker's white bread, with butter on for me. It was a friendly texture. The one thing I think that would make better the dish is if there was something crunchier involved perhaps, as a lot of the food was soft and juicy. I love breakfasts like I love Spanish women, soft and juicy, but every now and then you want something like a Spanish man, like Fernando Torres when he shaved his head, and that is a bit of crunch. Overall it was great and tasty, and I would be happy to go there for breakfast again, or maybe go in the evening and have a Guinness. Moo!

Thus ends Santiago's breakfast blog debut, substituted in the 85th minute after being brought on at half-time. That's probably happened to Fernando Torres at Chelsea at some point. One thing that Santiago didn't mention was the feel of the venue. The Cow is a bar rather than a cafe, yet one of its less obvious strengths is the amount of light that comes in, courtesy of large windows at the front of house (just look at that photo at the top). This gives it a similarly homely feel to most eateries, and really added to the energising effect of the breakfast we ate. It was a good way to start the day, and definitely a good way to start the year's fastbreaking.

Function: warming and energising - 4/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: only to be improved with textural variety 4/5
Value: quite a few coins but worth it - 3/5
Presentation: good for a "tapas" approach 5/5
Venue: - light and airy unlike most bars 4/5


Overall: no need to find an udder place to go at Seven Dials - 4/5

2013 in review

10th January.

Well, it hasn't quite been a full year since I began this breakfast blog, but this seems like an apt place to pause, take stock, and look forward to the breakfasts that 2014 will bring.

I have received a surprising amount of feedback about this blog, which is very exciting. Thanks to those of you who have followed my artery-clogging adventure throughout the last year and have said nice things about it. Also thank-you to everyone who agreed to join me for breakfast and put up with my scribblings whilst trying to engage me in polite conversation. You were all very lovely and great to share the breakfasts with.

I have decided to order the venues I have visited and their cooked breakfasts in a crude league table, as a point of comparison. At some point when I've more time I'll go back and order this list more thoroughly. As it is, the venues with matching scores are ordered randomly:


Montpelier Cafe - 4.5/5
Iydea - 4/5
Mange Tout - 4/5
Seven Bees - 4/5
Bill's - 4/5
Cafe Motu - 4/5
Soup-Urb - 4/5
Mad Hatter - 4/5
Wai Kika Moo Kau - 4/5
Langelees - 4/5
Kemp Town Bistro - 3.5/5
Fiveways Deli - 3.5/5
Tutti Frutti (I don't think this exists now!) - 3.5/5
Galleria - 3/5
Billie's Cafe - 3/5
Inside Out - 3/5
Kensingtons - 3/5
Infinity Foods Cafe - 2/5
Post and Telegraph - 2/5
Rock Ola - 2/5
Wild Cherry - 2/5
Dumb Waiter - 2/5
Spinelli - 2/5
Cosy Cottage - 2/5


There's a lot of good stuff out there, but more excitingly there's a heck of a lot more stuff that I have yet to sample. I think I will long run out of friends before I run out of places to visit, and should probably start drafting up an ad for Gumtree which I can use to find more breakfast companions.

"WANTED: Companion for one cooked breakfast, willing to say things whilst I go about scribbling and/or eating in contemplation. Being able to make nice suggestions/tell interesting life stories preferable but not essential. Meat eaters welcome. Just about."

As well as the regular breakfasting that this blog documents, I have another project in the pipeline for 2014. You may well be aware that I am keen fan of the sport known in most places as football. You may also be aware that this year is a World Cup year, and for a period of three weeks 32 nations will do battle across the pitches of Brazil attempting to be crowned champions of the world. During this time, I aim to make those 32 nations do battle across my breakfast table, and see which has the best cooked breakfast. Early favourites include Mexico and Ghana, and I am very excited to find out what I would be eating if I hailed from Bosnia-Herzegovina or Iran for example. Sadly Scotland will not be participating. If they were, they'd stand a good chance of getting out of the group stages. At Xmas time my Dad prepared a pretty epic Scottish dish which would have put him in pole position for the golden spoon award.

The Derek Xmas Special

Anyhow, I shall be hopefully forging ahead into the new year with another cooked breakfast this Sunday. Fingers crossed. If you'd like to join me some time, and/or if you know of anywhere that I should pay a visit to, just let me know! Happy fastbreaking for 2014 one and all.

Coming up to Christmas with Clare at Soup-Urb

December 22nd.

Whoops. It happened again. I stopped going out for breakfasts. The main contributory factor for this was NaNoWriMo; this year I had decided to make a proper fist of writing 50,000 words of political and environmental polemic, thinly disguised as a fantasy novel about steampunk dinosaur pirates, and this meant that there wasn't much time for dilly-dallying around eating tasty food and expending precious words on it. Then, once November had been and gone, I wanted a bit of a break from writing. This was coupled with football training being later on Saturdays, and then matches on Sundays being very tiring. All in all, there was neither the time nor the inclination to go breakfasting.

And then Christmas began to come along. This meant a surprise seasonal break in the football playing, along with some time-off of work which left much more space for writing in the distance. The magical mixture of a free Sunday and space for writing meant that it was time to hit the breakfast trail once more!

Clare Silver was my breakfast companion, and it was good to finally arrange a time that we were both free to fastbreak. She seems to have one of the most hectic schedules of all of my friends, being an active member in at least two strong friendship groups in Brighton, as well as maintaining incredibly strong ties with her family who live in Horsham. She went to 9 weddings this past year. Only a registrar will have been to more. I don't know where she gets the energy to do all of this butterflying around, but she always does it with a smile on her face and kindness in her heart.

She is also a seriously talented individual, a true master of craftwork. In her time she has created many, many things that people would eagerly spend vast quantities of money on were they to come across them in shops. Scarves, blankets, dresses (Team Silver played a major part in the creation of the bridesmaids' dresses at the Sykes-Williams wedding earlier in the year), furniture coverings, and she discussed with me her plans to maybe make a corduroy pinafore at some point in the future. I myself am the proud owner of a lovely blue and white striped apron with my initials on. You can't buy class like that.

We made our way to Soup-Urb on Trafalgar Street, a place that bills itself as serving up "urban food". I'm not entirely sure what urban food is supposed to be. I shall attempt to dissect this term later on in the review. The venue had a comforting feel though, even if this tagline was a little bamboozling. The furniture was rustic and artisan, and the menu was cutely bound together with an elastic band. Bob Marley was playing softly in the background, gaining the approval of both myself and Clare, who thought that he was good background music. Not because he should always be played quietly and out of the way, but because the mellow easy-going nature of his songs is welcoming and non-intrusive. Ever since she went to visit one of her best friends in Tanzania, she has developed a keen taste for reggae, although in general Tuff Gong is not one of her favourites. It's remarkable that I haven't heard reggae playing in more of these venues to be honest, considering how well a lot of the genre ticks the same boxes as the cooked breakfast. Both seem, to me in any case, all about recognising the value in taking it easy.

And so, the breakfast:

Full English Breakfast

--

Full English Breakfast - £8.50

"Live for others and you will live again" - Bob Marley

It's always a bit of a risk ordering a meal from a menu when it doesn't tell you what's in it. When me and Clare were in halls of residence at Exeter University, every now and then an interesting item would appear on the dinner time menu called Jackpot Casserole. This was a bit of a strange dish, and to this day I'm not any of us were ever sure what it comprised of, apart from celery being the majority stakeholder in the dish. It felt like a similar risk here at Soup-Urb. Was I going to be on the receiving end of celery mounted on a piece of fried bread?

Fortunately this was not the case. The Full English Breakfast comprised of the following; toast (choice of white or granary bread), eggs (choice of poached, scrambled, or fried), spinach, mushrooms, potatoes, tomato, and halloumi. It didn't adhere to the canon and so looked as though it would be a bit dry, but it was certainly much better than anything involving celery.

The one thing that was most striking about the breakfast at Soup-Urb was how perfectly all of the separate components were cooked. Cooked breakfasts usually contain several items that have very different optimum cooking times, and so the act of co-ordinating them can be a fine art, particularly with the more complex breakfasts. The Soup-Urb breakfast contains pretty much the full spectrum of cooking times in it, from the delicate spinach through to the hardy potatoes, though foregoing the inclusion of any item that can just be bunged in an oven for a while whilst attending to other things. To get all of the items spot on is an impressive feat.

To hammer this point home, I have eaten there twice now (partly because I forgot to photograph my food there the first time...) and have tried both the scrambled and poached eggs. Both require very different approaches and amounts of time in preparation, and both yielded superb results, being solid, moist, fluffy, and explosive when required, and keeping these qualities in harmonious balance.

None of the items seemed to have any extra extravagant flavourings added to them, letting the original ingredients speak for themselves. It is a testament to good cooking and ingredients that a component of a dish can taste so delicious in isolation.

The problem was, inevitably, that there were no baked beans. One could argue that beans would ruin the overall aesthetic of the food; the "urban food" aesthetic. I have been in discussion with several people since the breakfast, and the jury is still out as to what the term means. A swift google search shows that it is likely that Soup-Urb have coined the term themselves. To me (and others), "urban food" suggests food for the urbanite, for the individual in an urban environment. Such an individual is likely to be very busy, as is the way with urban environments, and so is in need of food quickly. The urban individual is also cultured, and so wants something a little classy, but also reliable. We're either talking about trendy chain outlets like Pret a Manger or Delice de France, or street food that's a bit more flashy. Sexed up street food, or street food for the middle class. Urban food. I think it's possible to create baked beans to fit this model, and the extra vibrancy and moisture would have gone a long way to securing Soup-Urb's position near the top of the table.

Like reggae, the realm of breakfast can also be a place for social commentary. The cooked breakfast can be a uniting force; there is a certain beauty to the way in which you can buy a meal whose basic formula is replicated everywhere from the greasiest of greasy spoons to the starchiest of table-clothed bistros. It is a model that is enjoyed by all, regardless of their social strata. There is no place for elitism at the breakfast table. It could be argued that the strict worshipping of my "breakfast canon" is a form of elitism, but I feel strongly that each of my four essentials are as mandatory in a cooked breakfast, for both traditional and practical reasons, as water, yeast, malt, and hops are in beer. Bob Marley wanted to see all of mankind live together. One way for this to happen would be for all people in society to open themselves up to baked beans. One love. One heart.

Function: hearty, but strangely marketed 3/5
Adherence to canon: No!
Taste: simply done, but done very well 5/5
Value: costly, but perfectly executed 4/5
Presentation: "urban food"?! No! And more colour please 2/5
Venue: felt homely, with calming ambience 4/5

Overall: largely superb, but driving me to over thinking everything - 4/5 

Munching with Matt at Cosy Cottage

November 2nd.

If someone was to ask you to imagine a "cosy cottage", what sort of image would your mind conjure up? An idyllic setting, no doubt deep in the beating heart of peaceful countryside. Warmth, comfort, love. A chimney and a thatched roof perhaps, with a roaring fire and maybe a dog snuffling around your feet as you either drink a steaming mug of tea or leaf through an old, yellowing James Herriott paperback. Preferably both. You are tired from a full day of walking out across fells and striding over ridges, and you are eagerly awaiting some food whilst your bones sing gratefully from the confines of the luxurious winged armchair you are happily tucked away in.

As you are summoned for dinner by the mistress of the cosy cottage, you might expect to tread softly through into a room like this:

Now myself and Matthew Earwaker hadn't been striding over ridges or walking out across fells but we had been engaged with a morning of hard sport; I had had football training and Matt had had an intense session of battledore, following on from the previous night where he had stayed up 'til 3am watching a truck race. We were both weary from our exertions and we needed a-feeding. A stint in a cosy cottage would be perfect, and so we found ourselves entering into Cosy Cottage on London Road for our post-exercise fastbreaking.

Matt and I had shared cosy residentials previously. Back at Exeter University we had been housemates for two years, and this autumn Matt has finally given in to persuasion and become the next Exeter alumnus to make the move to Brighton. We are finally reunited, and hopefully the new year will see us revisiting our former passions; 5-a-side football (previous members of The Brotherhood of Justice) and music (current members of SmoothGay). Perhaps with a teeny tiny bit of FIFA or PES thrown in for good measure. Only a tiny bit though. Just a wee bit. We don't want to stifle our productivity.

Instead of the luxurious winged armchairs, roaring fireplace, and inquisitive dog, we were met with a very chic and stylish interior, rather than a cosy one. The walls had wooden trim, there was a jagged mirror on one wall, there were fairy lights, and all of this was soundtracked by some pulsating hip beats from the stereo. It was altogether more house than cottage.

In the windows are a neon sign and a poster advertising its shisha bar, fronted by a model looking suspiciously akin to Jo O'Meara from S Club 7. A wonderful cover for this particular book. From the outside it looked as though it was going to be a good traditionalist greasy spoon, but here it looked as though they were making a concerted attempt to refine any grease into a thoroughly flashy substance that they could perhaps sell off, maybe as a knock-off Brylcreem that you could apply to your hair before hitting West Street.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegi Breakfast

2 veg sausages, 2 eggs, beans, tomato, mushrooms, 2 hash browns and toast

Vegi Breakfast - £5.95

Matt has yet to return to Brighton following the Xmas holidays, and so I have managed to find enough time to type this review up. FIFA single player doesn't grab me in the way it used to.

Okie dokie then.

Ugh.

Dr. Giggles, 26, Brighton

 To be fair to Cosy Cottage, it wasn't a disaster. The beans and the Glamorgan-style sausages were richly lovely. The beans in particular had a deep sultriness to them that surprised me. Rather like how quite a few people who frequent the hotspots of West Street are nice people underneath all of those beauty products and the simmering violence.

The hash browns were quite thin, and so were inevitably crispy. This was tempered by a mellow inside, which lacked punch. The mushrooms were cheerful, but this cheerfulness was severely hampered by the size of the portion. They seemed like an afterthought unfortunately, which was tragic since they were quite tasty.

The main problem was the cooking of the cottage; they seemed to mess their timings up a bit. Whilst the eggs had pleasantly explosive yolks, the whites managed to be both soft and crunchy simultaneously. The tomato was underdone to the point of being al dente. There had been some seasoning application, but it really needed much more time in the cooker for it to have any kind of tasty impact on the dish. The same could not be said for the toast; the bread was decent, but my cynical side wonders whether it came pre-buttered in an attempt to conceal the burning it had suffered.

It didn't feel as though much care had been put into the preparation of the breakfast. This might wash with post-pub and club grub where your inebriation means that, so long as its hot and you don't need to cook it yourself, you have a great time eating it. Breakfasts need more tenderness than this. Breakfasts should lift you up, not bring you down. A good breakfast prepares you for an adventure, rather than guiding you home. Cosy Cottage failed in these respects. It just goes to show that, whilst you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, it is even more important that you don't judge a cafe by its title.

Function: body of breakfast, mindset of kebab 2/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: some positives, but overall disappointing 2/5
Value: at least give me 2 spoonfuls of mushroom for that price 2/5
Presentation: burnt toast never looks good 2/5
Venue: Although the food adhered to the canon, the venue did not 1/5

Overall: more hard house than cosy cottage - 2/5 

Matt will be back to Brighton tomorrow hopefully. Then we'll be able to play some FIFA. Only a little bit mind. Just a tiny wee bit.