Have been for almost two years, John, but oh so homesick. I’ll do my best for the Toronto FE/IB though. Phoenikia is right about the standard peameal bacon here. I do like it and sometimes more so than the British rasher. A traditional Toronto breakfast is getting harder to find with so many places going upscale. The caff equivalent is a “greasy spoon” and they’re gradually dying. Anyway, I don’t feel Toronto has to have an FEB, the FTB is a goal. @Phoenikia, I miss The Stem. Now before I go too far off-topic…
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Donna’s occasionally does a Full English. It looks good on Instagram. They post on Instagram when it’s available.
I haven’t tried it yet.
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I say NO to the addition of a hash brown to any British breakfast?! Sacrilege. Bring back fried bread!
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I’m currently staying at bloor and dufferin. Will see what Donna’s offers.
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It hasn’t been offered for a while, but maybe they’ll offer it soon.
Every Friday and Saturday, they told me. I’ll make it there at some point.
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Ya think??!!
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Looks a decent breakfast, even if the beans look a bit watery. Can’t see the black or white pudding - I wonder where they’re hiding. And, surely, those are hash browns not the advertised sauté potatoes.
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I can’t seem to reply properly to some replies lately, so I’ll quote.
He may have told them to hold the white and black pudding. I do this. I don’t enjoy them enough to eat them and I’m already overweight so it’s not a good use of space for me. Someone else might as well enjoy them.
He didn’t mention the potatoes. Good eye, @Harters.
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I dream of the oatcake I had 20+ years ago when visiting the UK and the Potteries museums. Hopefully someday I’ll get back there to have one again. An ideal breakfast, in my opinion (with bacon and cheese, please!)! Really need to try making them someday in the meantime. Sigh.
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Staffordshire oatcake, with bacon and cheese, is a favourite in this house. The oatcakes are readily available in our usual supermarket (but then we are only 30 miles or so north of the Staffordshire border with Cheshire. I also like them with jam - but I know that’s heresy.
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BTW, John, I’d never remembered hash browns as being part of the Full English Breakfast back in the 80s & 90s. Somehow, it seemed more “American” than British.
Nowadays, it seemed ubiquitous and is actually one of my favorite sides, more so than sauteed potatoes. Just wondering when it became a thing.
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How wonderful that you can buy them at the supermarket! If only they could become popular in the US. I’ll just have to try making them!
About 20 - 25 years back, when they generally started to replace fried bread. And about the same time, that baked beans started to replace grilled tomato in lower end of the market. Both changes easier and cheaper.
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I’ll always distinctively remember an incident that happened back in 2000. I was with a bunch of colleagues at a 3-day company conference at Moorhall in Cookham. We came from all over the world, and 4 came from our company’s American office in Columbus, Ohio.
The first morning, at breakfast, our American colleagues remarked that the “toasts here taste funny”. We realised then that they were putting butter and jam on their fried bread!
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Good story, Peter.
Fried bread is such a rarity these days. You generally won’t find it in a “greasy spoon” and are really looking at upmarket independent hotels
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Exactly.
The Hotel du Vin in Cambridge still had fried bread on my last visit, I think.
At a 4 star chain hotel, the Park Plaza in Cardiff, frozen hash brown patties were already being served by the time I visited in 2016. It was a buffet, and they had the grilled tomatoes and all the meats to make your own Full English.
They, fortunately, had nice Welsh Cakes at their rather nice breakfast buffet.
I usually stay at either independent hotels, the historic hotels in under the Marriott Brand, or hotels affiliated with the Global Hotel Alliance (so I can collect points).
The Bloomsbury in London is a hotel that’s in the Global Hotel Alliance, that has a nice restaurant on site, Dalloway Terrace , which doesn’t look or feel like a hotel chain restaurant.
That said, the last time I stayed there, we decided to have breakfast at a nearby Gail’s instead.
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I have dissed the “greasy spoon” level too soon. The cafe at one of our national supermarket chains, Morrisons, includes fried bread with its “Ultimate” breakfast. That’s “ultimate” in the context of in addition to the fried bread, there’s three sausages, two rashers of bacon, two fried eggs, mushrooms, two slices of black pudding, two hash browns and baked beans. And it’s only £8. My late father in law used to do his weekly “big shop” at Morrisons and I’d often take him - leaving him to get on with shopping while I had breakfast and a read of the Guardian in the caff. No need for lunch on those days. I don’t think I’ve been since he died as I can’t stand the place for shopping.
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