No. 3 The Spinnaker Cafe, Portsmouth

No. 3 The Spinnaker Cafe, Old Portsmouth (Portsmouth)

They say you can never go home again. This is clearly rubbish as I was back in my home town of Portsmouth. My good mother and I decided to have breakfast so we headed down to Old Portsmouth, which is such a historic part of the town I narrowly escaped being pressed ganged in an alleyway.

Your Editor: dry.

...on a collision course with
an Isle of Wight Ferry.

It was hot and I thought I'd have a swim in the sea (BBC4 viewers and those in Islington, please read 'Wild Swimming' for 'swim in the sea'). Having edged into the water like a man worried he'd dissolve, I was somewhat alarmed at the speed of the current and had to battle quite hard not to be dragged through the harbour mouth and into the path of several car ferries. Having not been dragged to a watery grave I was able to regain my composure and exit the water as if nothing had happened.

I dried off in the suns warm rays while the ancient sea washed the shore. As I squinted out to sea I thought of all the people that have sailed from this very spot to unimaginably distant places in the world: The first Australians in 1787, The Mary Rose, The HMS Bounty...the HMS Pinafore.

After a pleasant sunbathe we walked over the road and up to the Spinnaker Cafe. It has been a classic fryup location in Portsmouth for generations, and we thought that at one time it may have served as a British Rail cafe for people waiting to go over to the Isle of Wight. I remember the cafe being a lot more rough and ready when I was a kid but it is now rather nice inside. 

Your Editor: Wet. 

The Fry-up

The Fryup was a "Medium Breakfast" which is served all day. It would have cost £5.50 but I got  Black Pudding as an extra. Said pudding was included in the large breakfast but I thought that excessive at £7ish. Blog followers; please try to avoid paying evening meal prices for a Full English.

The Spinnaker gets points for playing 'Ziggy Stardust', but a large downside is that there is no loo. Instead you have to go over the road to a public toilet, but as long as you don't have a second tea you should be fine.

Your Editor...
oddly colour co-ordinated with the food.

The breakfast was generously portioned. I had builders tea and fried bread rather than toast (we swapped a piece of each thus getting a taste of both).

Generally, the addition of tinned tomatoes are a touch of class, but a drawback is that their juice is unruly and can rush round the plate making things wet. The chef was obviously acutely conscious of this crisis because the tomatoes were served in individual ramekins! To be honest I found this a tad OCD and would rather the elements got involved with each other. The tomatoes were very good; I feel the role they play in the drama of the fry up is to be the only real health item...a sort of refreshing sorbet to cleanse the palette.

It wasn't dark or empty but here it is looking dark and empty.

The Black Pudding on the other hand is not something you can feel holy about eating. As it's the first occasion that it been featured on the Blog it might be worth saying that it is cooked circle of blood and fat. Yes. Most cultures have some sort of traditional blood sausage, and this is ours. On this occasion it was a welcome friend, although slightly on the dry side as you can see from the image. The real star of this particular breakfast show were the mushrooms, they were salty and juicy and wonderful, if a little sparse, there being just two. The sausage was poor quality, a better sausage would have lifted their breakfast greatly. It was still great.

The "Wild Swim and Fry up Club" is a great social society waiting to get started. Such a shame I don't live there anymore!

7.5/10

Needless to say, afterwards I certainly was a Full English.

No.2 The Ritz Restaurant, West London, UK

No.2 The Ritz Restaurant, West London, UK

Hello all. Since posting the first blog I have been pleased with the response. Many people I know have said that it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done (bastards).

This fry-up utilized one of the more medicinal aspects of the Full English: The hangover cure, and who better to share a hangover Fry-up with than Malcolm ‘Marlon’ Jones. 

 ‘The Ritz Restaurant’ near the end of the Goldhawk Rd in Chiswick was chosen as the location. (I’m hoping for a string of invitations from glamorous cafes around the world but until then a few might involve Chiswick in some way.) It’s an eatery that is noted for its slightly delusional use of the word 'restaurant', and also for a James May sighting. The tables/chairs are as static as the welcome and are from the RyanAir school of leg room.

We took a few photos but the photo quality is a little poor here partly because of the spin that the staff were sent into at the sight of someone taking photos of the food. They didn’t come over but there was a lot of talking behind hands and pointing. Overall it’s a great little place to sit on a sunny Saturday and look at King Street outside.

The Fry Up:

It was a ‘Set Breakfast 1’ at about £5.50 and is an archetypal modern fry-up; a good basic measure. As you can see we’re talking about standard: sausage, beans (obviously Heinz), fried egg, and hash browns.  The food always come quick in these places but the toast and tea come first like unbidden Amuse Bouche, and as our mouths were like the bottoms of birdcages it was most welcome.

The sausage, more than any other fry up ingredient, is the barometer of quality for the whole dish and I can report that it was more black-market than farmers-market: at best average. The browns were enjoyable, but generally they are a bit of an American imposter, it’s similar to the debate around chips being included (something for later blogs). The sunny side up fried egg meant that I could put it on the provided toast to eat the white, leaving an island of yolk to be devoured in one mouthful. This is the best and only way to eat the fried egg. The conversation ran wildly from Olympic themes to whether driver’s faces age more on one side because of the hours by the window. It was forty minutes of good food and relaxed amusement; exactly what the full English is all about.

Where is the food again...?

I don’t know what you think, but it's my opinion that for £5.50 one should get at least one prestige ingredient; perhaps mushrooms or even black pudding. Apart from that it was a solid 7/10.

Needless to say that afterwards I was a ‘Full English’.

No.1: Café Merkur: Vienna, Austria

This blog is intended to look at the art of Full English Breakfast as it’s interpreted in modern England and across the world.

No.1 Café Merkur: Vienna, Austria

www.tunnel-vienna-live.at/merkur/index.php

After traveling to Poland to see family it was decided by the holiday committee that we needed a holiday away from the holiday. Thus, a five hour drive was undertaken without so much as stopping in the Czech Republic (sorry), to the excellent City of Vienna. It was there that we were to meet (impose upon) the lovely Ellie and her friends. What can I say? It was a really brilliant weekend with the only sadness being that we hadn’t gone before.

During our time there Myself, Kat, Ellie and Birgit went to the “Café Merkur” which is a lovely little find of a café full of locals and regulars. Couples drinking coffee and talking quietly to each other…a pigeon being shooed out by the waitress; a great place to while away a whole day if you have the chance.

The Fry Up.

On looking at the Menu I was happy (bosom swelling with pride) to see the English Breakfast. Eclipsing surely the jet engine and tennis; no English gift to the world can be more important than the Fry-Up.

Oddly the Austrians have a perception that the British are obsessed with mint and mint sauce so I was slightly concerned that mint may be involved. It wasn’t, and once it arrived the breakfast was audacious. The plan in the kitchen seemed to be minimize washing up by frying the whole thing in a sort of pool of fried egg laying a sausage over the top like an unused lilo on a swimming pool. The whole thing is then served in the very pan that it was fried in!  

For a city of such great food it was a little under seasoned. Having everything set hard in a pool of egg does not let the ingredients breath and stand on their own terms. Perhaps it’s ok for the Mushrooms to sometimes get caught up in fried egg but the bacon and tomato were set in solid like a Wooly Mammoth preserved in Antarctic ice. In truth it was more of a Spanish Omelette of breakfast. What did help matters was the addition of a lovely bread roll that looked like a great stone. Overall it was a fascinating and unorthodox interpretation of the fry up.

And I must say that afterwards I certainly was a ‘Full English’.

(I will be using this line to end all blogs)