The English breakfast is packed with cholesterol and calories, but after it you won't feel hungry until lunch, according to a BBC Travel correspondent
The English breakfast is a cholesterol-loaded calorie bomb, usually consisting of two eggs, fried sausage, bacon, baked beans, fried tomato, and toast. A very tasty and filling thing: it instantly cures any hangover and you don't want to eat again until lunch. If you eat it as often as Maugham suggests, your life expectancy might be seriously shortened. But fans of this dish are sincerely convinced that the day should start with it.
During my recent trip to London, I decided to eat several such "fry-ups" (as it's colloquially called) to find out for myself whether this is indeed the optimal breakfast, and also to understand whether Maugham's gastronomic advice should be taken seriously.
At the Regency Cafe in London's Pimlico area, the English breakfast has been served since 1946. I asked local food critic Lizzie Mabbott to be my guide and consultant. At the entrance to the cafe, we ran into a customer leaving, with a newspaper under his arm and a fresh black eye. I wondered: would I have to fight my way through a full plate, too?
Mabbott and I got in line and looked at the menu written in chalk on the board: the standard breakfast includes egg, bacon, sausage, baked beans or tomatoes, bread or toast, tea or coffee. All for five and a half pounds (about $8.60). For a small extra charge, you can also order an English version of hash browns, fried black pudding (blood sausage with bits of fat) and bubble and squeak (fried potatoes and cabbage).
The cafe's interior is simple: plain hard plastic tables, plastic chairs, and boxing memorabilia and souvenirs hanging on the walls. A graceful woman at the counter loudly calls orders to the kitchen: "Standard with tomato! Standard with beans and chips!" We order: I get the standard with black pudding and bubble and squeak.
While we wait, Mabbott tells me about her own rules for eating an English breakfast: "Much ink has been spilled over the sauce question: ketchup or brown sauce (a sweet and sour condiment similar to ketchup with molasses, dates, and vinegar). I usually put brown sauce on the sausage and ketchup on the other fried elements." But that's not all: "I don't like it when the yolk touches the tomato, and I know people who agree with me."
And indeed, many people have their own rules for an English breakfast. In the BBC comedy series "I'm Alan Partridge", starring Steve Coogan, it was claimed that eggs and baked beans should be kept separate on the plate. "I might want to mix them, but I need to make that decision myself," says Coogan's character in an episode where a Russian girlfriend cooks him an English breakfast. "And the sausage should be used as a dam between them."
People laugh because there is a lot of truth in that joke. Not every English breakfast lover has such strict rules, but every now and then you end up at a table with someone (like me now) who pays close attention to details. Mabbott recommends first examining and evaluating the sausage, which she says is an indicator of the overall quality of the breakfast. "If the sausage is good," she says, "then everything else on the plate is usually edible too."
The sausage at Regency Cafe was surprisingly decent, juicy, and fresh, especially considering it was served in a simple local eatery that doesn't adhere to a healthy menu. And the breakfast as a whole turned out better than I expected. The black pudding, however, was a bit dry. The acidity of the tomato helped balance the fatty bacon. And my bubble and squeak, with semi-solid potatoes and occasional bits of cabbage, was overall not outstanding but it absorbed the runny egg yolk well.
According to the English Breakfast Society, a non-profit organization "dedicated to the history, traditions and heritage of the full English breakfast", this dish appeared in the early 19th century: landowners would have a hearty breakfast before going hunting or just during their morning reading. Later, in the same century, as the middle class began to emerge, more and more English people started imitating the rich – in particular, by eating an English breakfast like them. Soon the working class followed suit, realizing that a calorie-laden fry-up was a good start to a day of hard physical labor. By the 1950s, the English breakfast had become a national tradition.
Mindful of the dish's aristocratic roots, I decided to try its elite version. London restaurant critic Jenny Linford, author of the book "Food Lovers London", recommended the expensive restaurant Quo Vadis in Soho, which specializes in modern British cuisine.
The quiet interior of this restaurant feels like an old-fashioned club or a hotel lobby. The full breakfast here costs a whopping 12 pounds (almost $19), and it includes roughly the same set of ingredients as at Regency Cafe (though without baked beans). "In the expensive version," Linford explains, "the main difference will be in the higher quality of the ingredients."
And indeed, at Regency the black pudding was dry, while at Quo Vadis it was crispy on the outside and semi-liquid on the inside. The bacon was tender and juicy, and the egg yolks were bright orange.
"I suggested this place because the plate here nicely illustrates several trends in modern British cuisine," Linford explains. "High-quality food without pretension, in a relaxed atmosphere, and the ingredients are local and seasonal. In the past, perhaps, a really good English breakfast was only served in hotels. But now the situation has changed."
On the last morning of my stay in London, I went down to breakfast at the Milestone hotel in South Kensington, where I was staying, and saw a full English breakfast on the menu. At first I didn't want to order it: I had no particular desire to start a third consecutive day with a cholesterol injection. But perhaps it was worth it? I decided to try it anyway.
The decision was right. On the plate were two types of bacon (regular and streaky), baked beans in tomato sauce, appetizing bubble and squeak, soft black pudding, a sausage with taut skin and juicy filling, and perfectly cooked sunny-side-up eggs with runny yolks. I must say that of the three breakfasts mentioned, this one made the most favorable impression on me. It was very expensive – 25 pounds (almost 40 dollars), but its ingredients tasted excellent. It was worth every kilocalorie.
After such a quantity of English breakfasts, I began to fear that I might have a heart attack right on the plane over the Atlantic, on the way back to New York. But I began to better understand Maugham's advice. The playwright would surely be pleased with the current state of English cuisine: it is now much better than in 1965, when he left us. Moreover, I decided that Maugham was praising the English breakfast, not criticizing the rest of British cuisine. If not for the calories and cholesterol, this dish really would be worth eating three times a day.