What's for Breakfast

I should begin this post with a few notes about my own breakfast preferences. My usual morning fare is coffee and plain quick oatmeal cooked, or yogurt and some kind of bran cereal, and berries or bananas. When I’m in a hurry, I fold a slice of wheat bread around spoonful of peanut butter and a banana. On the weekends, I make migas, omelets, quiches, breakfast burritos, etc. I love eggs and don’t restrict them to morning meals. I never skip breakfast, especially the coffee.

Traditional “cooked breakfast” is hugely popular in Britain, and they’ve exported it to most of the colonies. In most cases, you will be offered tea and coffee, a variety of cold cereals, yogurt, and fruit and then the cooked breakfast: eggs, bacon (more like US ham, nice and thick, but not smoked), British sausages (under-spiced pork link sausages), sautéed small button mushrooms, half a tomato set on a griddle until it is soggy, bland baked beans straight from the starch laden can, and brown or white toast slathered in margarine. In northern England and Scotland you can expect blood sausage to show up as well. Often you can opt for porridge. While many accommodations boast breakfast awards, I’ve found little variation in content and quality in my travel in the UK, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. This breakfast is available at B & B’s throughout the UK for an additional cost charged to your room of about £7-10. If it is a larger hotel, you might also find yogurt, cold cereal, and fruit. Breakfast is like most food in Britain, bland. It’s as if the predisposition to apathy has taken over the taste buds.

In a recent trip back home to the States, I found quite different fare. I stayed in a Courtyard by Marriot, in a relatively small town, at a cost of about $90 per night. A buffet breakfast was an optional charge of $8. A buffet is when food is all laid out and you take just whatever portion suits you. In this breakfast were scrambled eggs, breakfast sausage (slices of ground spiced meat—not links), bacon (streaky bacon to the Brits), American biscuits and gravy (American biscuits are essentially the same as English buttermilk scones. Brit's "biscuits" are America’s "cookies"), pancakes, waffles you can make on the spot, fruit, yogurt, cold cereal, oatmeal (porridge to the Brits), toast, bagels, and so on. A lot of options, and potentially a lot of waste: it’s the American way. In these situations, I usually have breakfast and pack a bagel with cream cheese and a few pieces of fruit so I don’t have to buy lunch. If you are staying at a lesser hotel the way I usually do, they will serve “free continental breakfast.” This is usually instant coffee (Nescafe to some of you) along with packaged pastries and Tang (instant orange juice). If you are lucky, you might get a banana and toast.

A real continental breakfast, meaning in continental Europe, is different. I’ve travelled only in Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, so these observations are limited. Nonetheless, breakfast in all of those places is generally the same. There are espresso types of coffee, tea, and a selection of juices. Cold cereal, yogurt, fruit, toast, a selection of cold cuts and cheeses, boiled eggs, and a selection of pastries—of course croissants!

In Chile, there is only instant coffee—Nescafe. In a grocery store, I saw coffee from Haiti, but decided to pass. I’ve only travelled north of Santiago, mostly in the Atacama. Breakfast there was usually something like thin cold cut slices of chopped and formed ham, bland white cheese, toast and jam. The best bet is to head to the open market and buy avocados, fresh goat cheese, and bread (photo below). I’ll have to do some more legwork in South America to find out if this is consistent with other locales.

My favorite breakfast is the rooster bullet at the Gilbert General Store after a long weekend of canoeing and camping on the Buffalo River in Arkansas. The best homemade buttermilk biscuits split open and topped with breakfast sausage or bacon, eggs over easy, and then smothered in sausage gravy. Followed by coffee and a spell in a rocking chair on the porch, it can't be beat.