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It's NATIONAL BREAKFAST WEEK! Yes, that is a thing. So to celebrate, here's our fave foods for the most important meal of the day.
1. Boiled egg and soldiers
Combining three pillars of the pre-noon menu – eggs, bread and butter – the boiled egg is basic but brilliant. It can be cute, with its decorated, purpose-built cups and its ‘dippy’ nickname; it can be sophisticated with a sprinkle of cracked black pepper and a slick of Marmite. However you take it, there’s no beating warm, runny yolk and the joy of knowing that you’re using toast as cutlery.
2. Bacon sandwich
Curer of 4,382 hangovers every MINUTE in the UK*, the bacon sandwich is literally the lifeline of those who wake up hungry. Remarkable in many ways, not least the fact that even if you buy it from a caff it should set you back no more than £2.50 (including tea).
* Statistics may have been approximated
3. Beans on toast
By some misprint in the nutritional guidebooks baked beans actually count as one of your five-a-day, making this breakfast classic healthy as well as cheap and filling. Those on raw food diets can still indulge – simply leave the bread un-toasted and the beans cold.
4. Pancakes
You have to have some kind of charmed life to be making pancakes for breakfast, but if you do manage it then congratulations, for it’s the sort of life we aspire to. Be they crepes, Scotch pancakes, drop scones or big fat fluffy American bastards, these breakfast blankets are the ideal vessel for Nutella, maple syrup, Nutella, bananas, Nutella, lemon juice, Nutella, blueberries or even Nutella.
5. Full English
In some ways this is, of course, the ultimate way to start your day. Any plate that comes pretty much as standard with three types of pork product is a winner in any gentile’s book. It also provides your whole day’s calories in one sitting, which is both efficient and disgusting.
6. Avocado on toast
Yes, we know you’re sick of the sight of it but this is a rare example of don’t hate the game, hate the player, because everyone’s favourite pear-shaped salad ingredient is a magnificent toast topper. You don’t have to be on a twat to enjoy its creamy virtue on a thick wedge of crusty bread, but you do have to be a twat to Instagram it.
7. Waffles
One in four Hackney flats owns a waffle iron, but only 1% of the borough’s population admits to knowing what to put in a waffle iron*. As a let’s-do-brunch choice, though, the waffle is a winner, especially now that many places have adopted America’s habit of topping them with fried chicken. Fried chicken for breakfast! The American dream.
* Again, we made this up
8. Eggs benedict
One of the few dishes on this list that even Heston doesn’t bother making at home, because Benedict is the fanciest chap on the breakfast line-up. Only an English muffin is a prim enough base for its high-maintenance toppings, and only the upper classes have a cholesterol tolerance level strong enough to handle a sauce made from more egg yolk and loads of butter.
9. Porridge
A breakfast so frugal even students turn their noses up at it, the rise of porridge’s ‘cool’ status remains a mystery to us. If you like yours made with almond milk and sprinkled with chia seeds we will judge you as hard as those who insist it tastes nice with just salt in. We’re campaigning for a return to the days when you could top your porridge with one of two things: golden syrup or jam.
10. Grapefruit
You can grill it all you want. We don’t even care if it’s been sprinkled with sugar from Queen Elizabeth’s tea tray. Starting your day with half of what is essentially a giant lemon gone wrong is an idiotic move.
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