By BoLOBOOLNE payday loans
Date of Breakfasting: Wednesday 13th May
Nearest tube is London Bridge
Location: 7 London Bridge Walk, London, SE1
A map can be found here:
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/restaurants/map/240/dakin-and-co
the cafe is near London Bridge Station, near to where Richer Sounds is on that walkway bit above the road.
Harry at the Giggling Sausage has been doing breakfasts for 22 years, and the end product certainly shows that although practice never actually achieves perfection, it certainly gets you pretty close. With proper chunky chips, well cooked eggs, generous servings of beans, tasty black puddings, and the obligatory namesake sausage, this place certainly lives up to its promise.
As happy to provide you with individually ordered items as they are to rustle up any of the voluminous array of set breakfast options, the service certainly cannot be faulted. And, on seeing our poster, the proprieter nipped over to our table to discuss a few of the finer points of the aesthetics of a well-organised breakfast spread.
Was anything wrong at all? Not much. The eggs could perhaps have been slightly less greasy – but as they were cooked to just the right degree, it’s hard to fault. Overall: highly recommended
Yes, tis true .. I’ve been watching *THAT* Blackadder episode again. But it’s not completely irrelevant either – as this month’s breakfast will be taking place at the inimitably named “Giggling Sausage” caff, near to London Bridge. With a name like that, you kind of have to go really. (Thanks to our blog-watcher Northcote for the suggestion – and note to all lurkers, suggestions gladly received!).
Date of Breakfasting: Wednesday 8th April
Nearest tube is Borough
Location: The Giggling Sausage, 105 Great Suffolk Street
Ok, so it was Broadway Westminster rather than Broadway, New York – but there was a taste of America in event. Specifically, in the sausages, which tasted very much like American sausages. And not in a particularly good way. In a kind of bland and processed way. The overall quality of the breakfast was below average, with the solid yolks on the fried eggs and fairly lacklustre toast, and quite sparing portions of mushroom (an especially heinious sin in the Breakfast Wednesday book). The one saving grace was that, for those who are able to stomach the stuff, apparently the bubble and squeak measured up well. Unfortunately, this was not really enough to make up for the rest of the fare.
However, Breakfast Wednesday was particularly glad to welcome our first Japanese guest – whom we can only hope was not too put off by the standard of this month’s fare. Fortunately, our decision to recommend the bubble and squeak proved to be a good one. Next venue will be announced shortly. Keep watching!
Date of Breakfasting: Wednesday 11th March
Nearest tube is St James’s Park.
Location: Broadway Café, 16 Broadway
Among the perils of moving house is that irritating intervening period without any internet access except from the dodgy 16 Pentim 200s in a basement ‘internet cafe’ in the grocery store. ’Internet dungeon’ more like. Anyway, all this is a pathetic attempt to excuse the length delay between the occurrence of the last breakfast and the appearance of the write-up. So how did Tiffin fare?
Let’s get the let-down out of the way first. The curry was unfortunately only available to order for lunch, not to have for Breakfast, which was a source of disappointment to at least one adventurous breakfaster. However, that aside, opinions did vary somewhat – with some ranking it among the top breakfasting experiences, and others who felt it was more of a ‘could do better’. In fairness, it is a fundamental basic of breakfasting etiquette to offer a choice of brown or white bread, so although the Tiffin toast tower was impressive it could have been bettered by the simple offer of that option.
On the other hand, extra points were certainly in order for the fantastic concept of describing every single item on the menu as ‘Chef’s special’. It’s exactly this sort of idiosyncrasy that marks out a proper caff. Not only that, but the prices were extremely reasonable – even the “Chef’s Special Big Boy” – 2 eggs, 2 bacon, 2 sausage, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, potato waffles, hash browns, toast and coffee – was a mere £5.90. Now that’s what i call quantitative easing!
Service was prompt and friendly, and the breakfasts themselves were cooked well – it’s always refreshing to find somewhere that serves a properly cooked hash brown. Some caffs just don’t get it, and appear to think that serving up any old limp yellow slodge in a roughly triangular shape will do. The clue is in the name .. hash browns should always be … brown! Well these were brown indeed, and crispy and meltingly delicious to boot. There was no faulting the cumberland sausage either, eggs arrived with their yolk intact and cooked through, the bacon was just as I liked it – soft and well cooked – there is a special fate reserved for those heretics who advocate crunchiness in breakfast bacon. And, vitally, the mushrooms were plenteous.
To round the whole experience off, it was a welcome sight to see a breakfast oriented headline on the front of the day’s paper.
The Tiffin experience was certainly one to be repeated in my book. All I have to do now is find out if they will deliver to my desk!
Forget snowstorms, forget tube and bus meltdown, forget the ungritted pavements, forget global economic upheaval, forget those post-Christmas credit card bills – there’s NO excuse not to come to Breakfast! Especially not when it’s somewhere as special as Tiffin’s … with a menu that spans the globe, it’s a guarantee that there will be something there for every taste.
Ususal rules apply – come one, come all – whether you’ve been before or not, you are welcome! 7.30am is the official start time. Officials reserve the right to arrive shortly after the official start time in extenuating circumstances. You don’t have to be there start to finish, you can drop in any time, and leave whenever suits.
Date of Breakfasting: Wednesday 11th February
Nearest tube is Chancery Lane.
Location: Tiffin’s, 24 Leather Lane
View map of Tiffin’s, 24 Leather Lane on Multimap.com
Get directions to or from Tiffin’s
Oh yes, and last thing … if anyone (and by anyone, I mean three shifty looking blokes in hoodies and bandannas) offers you a cheap slightly used Asus 904HD, a blocked Nokia N95, and a brown wallet with a bunch of bank cards and my driving license in – please summon the assistance of whoever happens to be in the vicinity, place the gentlemen in the stocks, and then drop me a line. Much obliged!
A new year and a new start? Well if your version of that involves overly healthy detox eating then balls to it! Think about it, doing that would make it quite tricky to justify a fry-up, and if there’s one thing that can always be justified, it’s a fry-up (and doubly so if it’s a mid-month Wednesday) – just look what you’d be missing out on…
A large plate of breakfast: double egg, sausage & bacon along with beans and tomatoes (surely that’s at least one of your five-a-day) accompanied by coffee and toast. Okay on this occasion the food wasn’t great, tending as it did towards the average, but then this leaves lots of room for improvement over the course of the year (and it wasn’t unpleasant or anything unsavory like that).
Also of note is that the veggie breakfast is apparently very good (look at that smile – it’s not posed, really) and comes with a fair old mountain of chips, so if that’s something you like first thing in the morning then this is the place for you.
So anyway as to the cafe itself, the place somehow managed to feel largely pacious and yet also slightly cramped too – it is a pretty sizeable room and one that didn’t have too many people in (hence the space) but it was also rather full of tables which I would imagine get more occupied a bit later in the day (hence the cramped). The decor, such as it was, was quite simple with light walls adorned with a few framed coffee sacks and a large window onto the street keeping that feeling of space (and dare I say, simplicity – it was certainly less cluttered than most other places).
So um, yeah… in short I’d say it’s definitely somewhere I’d stop in again (though this is in part due to the fact it’s close to where I work) perhaps at lunchtime to sample some of their other fare.
P.S. next month: Tiffin’s (24 Leather Lane, EC1N 7SU) 11th February
Following the dire consequences of the attempted adventurousness of last month’s breakfast, for the final morning meet-up of 2008 we decided to go back over some old ground and return to a tried and tested favourite, Alpino – last visited over a year ago, in November 2007.
Sadly, no spare cash floated my way this time, presumably the credit crunch has everyone keeping a lot better tabs on their money in case some nasty banker spirits it away in a high-grade structured credit enhanced leverage fund.
On the plus side, Alpino are still serving up the same top quality inflation (and belt) busting grub. For a fiver, you can have yourself the aptly named ‘jumbo breakfast’ which consists of 2 sausage, 2 bacon, 2 black pudding, fried egg, mushrooms, toast and hash brown and a tea. There’s no arguing with that really.
December turnout was also heartening – the magnificent seven squeezed round a table and received service with a smile from a wonderful Italian mama style proprietress, who admired the Brompton under the table, joked with us, and saw us off with a cheery “Come again!”. The only cloud was the absence of Full English, who cried off with some story involving a cat, a dark staircase, and a twisted ankle. Fortunately ice and bed rest appear to have done the trick, so hopefully it will be a one off.
To anyone who turned up at TInseltown for last breakfast, apologies. I can only say that there was some fairly vital information missing from the information Tinseltown’s website. It should have gone something like this:
Tinseltown – 24 hour* diner
*N.B. “24 Hour” used here for illustrative purposes only. Actual opening hours may be smaller than depicted.
Yes indeed. The 24 hour diner was in fact closed when we arrived, for cleaning. What a wonderfully chosen time to perform these duties – 7am til 10am. Of course, there’s no chance that anyone might imagine that they could turn up to a 24 hour diner at, say, breakfast time and expect it to be open. No, surely not. It would truly be an astounding assumption that if, perchance, an establishment were to advertise a full breakfast menu its website, that it might actually be open during the hours at which one might want to take breakfast.
But enough about the never-again-to-be-mentioned place that has befouled our spotless record of fine breakfasting organisation with its bare-faced misrepresentation and general all round uselesness. Let us not dwell on that particular repository of shame a moment longer.
Leaving a note on the door with a phone number to guide any late arriving breakfasters to our whereabouts, we set out on a Breakfast seeking adventure around the streets of Farringdon, eventually settling down at the Madeira cafe, directly opposite Farringdon station. This eatery, having the good grace to actually be serving food during its advertised period of business, we got our orders in as quickly as possible and awaited our much anticipated sustenance
The resulting spread was reasonable – not astounding by any stretch, but certainly a good sight better than sweet nothing at all which is ALL WE GOT AT TINSELTOWN!! Sorry. Distracted for a moment there. Back to Cafe Madeira. Standout features were:
Also in favour of this caff, it’s about 2 seconds walk from Farringdon station, which counts for a lot when one is hungry. Oh, and I nearly forgot. Plus about a thousand bonus points for ACTUALLY BEING OPEN AT ALL. Sorry. Sorry. Distracted again. In all seriousness, although I wouldn’t necessarily rush back to Madeira, they do at least put their own unique slant onto the tried and tested Breakfast formula without straying too far from the straight and narrow.
