Big it up for Breakfast.

On breakfast.

“He wouldn’t always be late at breakfast”

Little Women, Louisa M Alcott. 

No other mealtime is sweeter, more intimate, private or personal than breakfast.

The first meal of the day or the morning meal, breakfast is special. Breakfast is exceptional, unlike lunch or dinner or any other meal. You cannot have dinner in the morning, or lunch in the evening. But you can have breakfast at any time you fancy. Breakfast works on its own terms. Breakfast is unique and breakfast is unmistakeable: everybody knows what breakfast looks like. Breakfast really is special. 

Breakfast is a bit of a diva. And (breakfast) birds of a feather flock together, especially to breakfast: no other meal is more prone to caprice or idiosyncrasies than breakfast. How do you like your breakfast in the morning? You can tell almost everything about a person from the way they are at breakfast. Breakfast is the most revealing meal of all. 

But breakfast is kindly and breakfast is accommodating: breakfast normalises all sorts of whimsies and fancies, frowned on at other mealtimes. Yet breakfast remains a proper business; the greatest number of the most serious deals are made at breakfast. 

No one ever said breakfast was for wimps. 

But even those suited and booted types at the first sitting at the Wolseley can make extraordinarily detailed and absurd requests at breakfast, type to stun a Sunset boulevard starlet, whilst maintaining their long and straight faces. (“Can you blend my porridge in a blender please? I like it better that way” - recently in Sloane Square.) Seems at breakfast, no one can be too picky. Not even HBR-published financiers. 

Prima donna or primo pasto, breakfast is hard to ignore and almost impossible to skip. You might convince yourself you’re not having breakfast, but you really kind of eventually always are: whatever the time of day. Breakfast is always there, waiting for attention. Hello all-day breakfast! No one ever heard of all-day lunch, and certainly no all-day dinner. But that’s not enough for breakfast. Breakfast had to go and take over lunch. Meal creep: that’s brunch.

Luckily, breakfast is always delicious. No one ever disliked breakfast. Eggs? Pastries? Pancakes? Granola? Breakfast is always and without fail universally loved. That must be the best thing about breakfast. Breakfast always makes everyone happy. 

And breakfast always smells delicious. Freshly ground coffee, soft buttery bakery, sharp pulpy juices, cheesy omelettes, crisped bacon, runny maple syrup. And even sweeter than patiently waiting for your flirtatiously smelling breakfast is being woken up by the smell of breakfast. One most excellent way to wake up. Start as you mean to go on, they say. 

 And breakfast is never bothersome. Breakfast is always just the right amount of cooking. And the right amount of effort and complexity. Everyone can make their perfect breakfast; one of life’s greatest satisfactions. Breakfast is oh so very clever. That breakfast.

 The most famed breakfast is no doubt the English breakfast, as old (- 13th century) as almost England itself. The protein-packed cooked breakfast is in stark contrast to its continental cousin; a light, carbohydrate-rich uncooked affair, potential insight and commentary on present political divergencies. (Though politics should of course not be discussed, especially not at breakfast.) 

British immigrants took their breakfasts to the US, where the special relationship prevails at breakfast - or at least in the eyes of the British remained (not to be confused with remainers) - with the small difference of sausages and beans swapped for pancakes or potatoes (the hardy hash browns). Partial nod to the Full English notwithstanding, breakfast in America is really its very own, fully independent affair. In America, anything goes. America is the king of choice and America is the king of rich pickings. Especially at breakfast. Pick anything your heart fancies, in America: pick pancakes (chocolate chip or blueberry) or bagels (everything with cream cheese or poppyseed with salmon and cream cheese; the sesame with white fish?); burritos, biscuits, waffles, muffins, smoothies, milkshakes, tacos, phos… anything you can think of, it’s right there, (with “breakfast-“ attached to it) waiting for you in America. America has it all and America eats it all. And if you’re not careful, America might just eat you for breakfast.

But no American breakfast dream is complete without hazelnut coffee: iconic and bottomless, dispensed all-day from those even more iconic, round-bottomed plump glass jugs. This might just be the world’s longest running food fad. It’s not clear where it came from or how it’s derived, but it is curiously delicious, an endlessly exotic and indispensable item at the American breakfast table for any visitor looking to fully enjoy a breakfast in America. 

But the all-day breakfast is by no means an exclusively Anglo affair; the clever Swiss snack on their Bircher muesli all through the day, and Parisians are prone to a cheeky pain au chocolat in the afternoons. The all-day breakfast is a sort of national MVP – good for the morning: good for the day. 

 But not in Italy, of course.. In Italy, they do things differently. In Italy they have taken all-day items and made them into breakfast. Ice cream for breakfast? Yes please! (In Sicily). Cakes for breakfast? Si! (In northern Italy, especially apple). Jam tarts? Nutella tarts? Not to mention biscuits: the most standard breakfast item countrywide. La dolce vita indeed. 

The proof is in the breakfast, as well as the pudding, and especially so when breakfast is a pudding. You can tell an awful lot about even an entire country from its breakfast, it would so seem.

No thought of breakfast is complete without eggs – the most celebrated breakfast item of the Western breakfast table. Eggs make a divine start to the day; gently and very slowly scrambled, over a very low heat, in plenty of frothy butter and served in a bowl, as they do in Paris. (And if you’re adventurous, you might have some diced ham and/or grated Emmenthal: this is a fabulous breakfast, for any age, even if scandalous by old-fashioned English standards). Or lightly and perfectly folded into an elegant yellow and herby oblong omelette, again as they demonstrate perfectly in Paris. Paris might really be the hallmark of eggs for breakfast, if it weren’t for eggs Benedict – one of the finest things to come out of New York City. All of these breakfast dishes make fantastic lunches or suppers of course, whatever those old fashioned strictures insist.

Paris might still be the greatest city for breakfast – for its lack of fervour or pressure exerted at breakfast. Breakfast is not ‘an institution’ or ‘a thing’ in Paris. There are no queues or fashions or waiting lists at breakfast there. Breakfast in Paris is exactly as breakfast should be: slow and lazy and smallish and simple but as exquisite as it all possibly can be, every little last bite of it. Of which there are not many, in Paris. It is not endless and bottomless. Breakfast in Paris is special and breakfast in Paris is precious. Sometimes, it doesn’t even happen at all. Sometimes, there are better things to do or think or talk of than breakfast. But this only in Paris. 

The Scottish contribution is not insignificant to breakfast. Both salmon and porridge make extraordinarily elegant and delectable breakfasts: serve smoked salmon with good quality butter and soda bread. Or organic Scottish porridge oats, the most delicious kind that only need water to render them creamy, cooked with a good pinch of salt, with a generous jug of very cold full fat pouring cream and a bowl of brown sugar. The beauty is in the balance: the hot plain salty porridge and the cold rich silky cream; the crumbliness of the sweet sugar. So much taste and texture from such muted colours and modest flavours. This might just be the most pleasing breakfasts of all. Reassuring and luxurious; proper, uncomplicated, worthy and sweet. All in a simple, single unassuming bowl… 

If it weren’t for champagne: even more reassuring, luxurious and uncomplicated, properly worthy and endlessly sweet. Nothing sparkles brighter at a table than a full bottle on ice, especially before midday. Champagne makes the most deviously delicious breakfast of all. Especially on an empty stomach. Don’t forget to have some every now and again, for breakfast. 

Champagne or no champagne, no meal holds more potential for glamour than our breakfast. Nor eccentricity: certainly not lunch and certainly not dinner. It is no easy feat to score an eccentric lunch or dinner. Because after all’s said and done - or perhaps before.. - breakfast holds the most promise and breakfast holds the most opportunity - of any other meal. 

And the greatest manifestation of promise and opportunity? The breakfast buffet, of course: the single most opportunistic and revealing incarnation of breakfast. 

Not forgetting its more private, less enlightening but just as promising-of-opportunity sibling: the breakfast in bed. But just as it is difficult to conceal true colours at the breakfast buffet, it is equally impossible to be yourself for breakfast in bed. Anyone can be anyone while breakfasting in bed…  

Breakfast really is special you see. 

That is why you have dinner and you have lunch – but breakfast you take.

So be sure to take a good breakfast, daily. And treat is as the very special meal it is; whether it’s the same daily routine or something one-off, handsome and unforeseen. Take a moment’s thought to make it as delighting as it possibly can be. 

But remember… it is always better to give than to take. So go and give a good breakfast to someone… Surprise them with the best of their favourite breakfast, the sweetest most intimate and private of meals. 

Because a breakfast shared is of course a breakfast bettered, but a breakfast given is still today as rare as a snow leopard.