Thursday, 2 August 2012

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



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)

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