Despite the somewhat chequered reputation of traditional British cooking, even its biggest critics will usually concede that breakfast represents its high point – and, while I wouldn’t say it’s all downhill from there, let’s be honest, the all-day fry-up is popular for a reason. As the late AA Gill once wrote: “Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life” – and, as a country, we really take that commitment seriously.
Not only is “le fry-up” one of the things we’re most famous for abroad, but unlike the royal family, or Mr Blobby, it’s one national treasure we can all be proud of, whether we sit down to a full Scottish in the morning, or grab a vegan sausage bap on the go. Mind you, that’s just about all we agree on, as I discovered last year when I set out on my bike to write a book on the subject – Red Sauce Brown Sauce. Any discussion about the great British breakfast tends to get bogged down in baked beans, or end in fisticuffs over back versus streaky – to say nothing of whether porridge should be salty or sweet, or the proper thickness of peel for marmalade. Instead of squabbling about such details, here are a few regional treasures I encountered en route that I think we should all be fighting to put on our plates:
