Source : the age
One of travel’s great delights is undoubtedly the food. Long after we return home, we wax poetic about our favourite meals on holiday, recalling the delicious discoveries found in that little bistro, the family taverna and the neighbourhood izakaya.
Breakfast while away is an unsung opportunity to begin each day immersed in the culinary traditions of a destination – what would a visit to France be without a morning croissant?
We’ve asked experts from around the globe to make the case for their national cuisine, from Mexico’s chilaquiles to the hoppers of Sri Lanka – and of course, the full English. Here is where to go to start your morning with a feast; it’s the most important meal of the day, after all.
Turkey
From a simple sesame-seed-encrusted simit (bagel) to a steaming bowl of mercimek çorba (lentil soup), a tender helping of sulu börek (cheese pie) to the scrambled egg with tomato, onion and pepper classic menemen, Turkey is heaven for breakfast lovers. But a “full Turkish” breakfast spread – encompassing everything from olives, tomatoes and cucumber to assorted cheeses, jams and honey, as well as various egg dishes and cured meats – is to die for.
Where to eat it
Where better than continent-straddling Istanbul, Turkey’s cultural heart? My favourite breakfast stop in this vibrant mega-city is Van Kahvaltı Evi, in fashionable Cihangir. Set up by émigrés from distant Van, a predominantly Kurdish province in mountainous eastern Turkey, regional twists on the standard breakfast here include mouthwatering kaymak (clotted water buffalo cream), kavurma (fried eggs with tender lamb slices) and kavut (roasted flour with walnuts and honey). It’s tasty, it’s great value and it’s served all day. Warning: Weekends, especially Sundays, tend to be busy.
– Terry Richardson
America
I’ll say it: There’s no better breakfast on earth than the hot plates whisked out from a bustling kitchen of an American diner.
It’s delicious, unpretentious, just the right amount of greasy, and customisable. There’s no need to decide between sweet and salty. American breakfast has perfected the two together: simply add a side of bacon to your buttermilk pancakes, slathered in maple syrup.
Once you get your order down – eggs scrambled, poached or fried, sunny-side up or over-easy, wheat or white toast, hash browns or home fries – you can join the ranks of regulars enjoying unlimited refills of coffee.
I’ve spent many a morning (and late night) tucked into a vinyl booth in my hometown’s gorgeously preserved 1930s dining car. A secret from years of perusing laminated, lengthy diner menus: order a pancake for the table, you’ll never regret an extra pancake.
Where to try it
The best diner is probably the one you stumble upon mid-road trip in Small Town, USA, but Clark Street Diner in Los Angeles serves a mean stack of blueberry pancakes. For a full immersion in neon and chrome in New York, head to Queens’s Court Square Diner, where you can grab a seat at the classic counter any time of day or night.
– Libby Ryan
Singapore
There’s no question in my mind that Singapore serves the world’s best breakfast – this tiny island is built for it. Our culinary heritage is rooted in three of the world’s greatest gastronomic civilisations (Chinese, Indian, Malay) and our cooking skills have been honed by decades of side-by-side competition in hawker centres.
The real argument should be about which Singaporean breakfast is best, because of the sheer choice. Mornings here start with an unbeatably diverse and delicious spread of dishes, the best-known of which is kaya toast – pandan-coconut jam on bread invented by Hainanese workers cooking aboard British colonial ships.
Where to eat it
Go to the no-frills YY Kafei Dian near Raffles Hotel, where fragrant kaya and cold butter arrive coddled between smoky, pillowy charcoal-grilled buns. Prata, Singapore’s take on the Indian flatbread paratha, is another breakfast favourite.
At Mr & Mrs Mohgan, in the charming eastern neighbourhood of Katong, the devastatingly crisp prata and umami dipping curry are well worth the usual hour-long wait. For a late-morning meal, head to Ponggol Nasi Lemak, where rich, slow-cooked Malay-style coconut rice comes with your choice of tasty trimmings.
But the standout breakfast buffet is at Straits Kitchen at Grand Hyatt Singapore, which gathers the Lion City’s greatest breakfast hits into one roaring (and, crucially, air-conditioned) buffet.
– Audrey Phoon
France
Where French breakfast falls down on quantity (a pain au chocolat leaves me hungry half an hour later), it wins with quality of the simplest ingredients. Try beating a crusty baguette de tradition française, still warm in the boulangerie’s paper bag, slathered with artery-clogging quantities of Breton butter with sea salt crystals.
Where to eat it
Don’t buy breakfast in a bistrot, you’ll pay through the nose for a couple of sad tartines accompanied by jam that’s probably Bonne Maman. Buy your salted butter from the covered market (les halles), in every city and most towns.
There are far too many bakeries for me to recommend just one in the country, but in Paris, I like The French Bastards, which has outlets across the city.
Hôtel des Grands Voyageurs is just around the corner from their outlet on Rue de Sèvres, and serves up a hearty breakfast of its own. In Lyon, try Antoinette Pain & Brioche.
– Anna Richards
Australia
Aussies have a habit of claiming things that aren’t ours – pavlovas, Russell Crowe, Crowded House – but smashed “avo” on toast is (almost) certainly true blue.
It’s been a quarter of a century since the modern classic filled an empty page in the late Bill Granger’s cookbook, Sydney Food, widely considered the catalyst for the dish’s popularity, and even today you’ll be hard-pressed to find a café without it on the menu.
Like the chilled-out culture the city is known for, the recipe is almost too easy: crispy, chewy sourdough topped with creamy avocado (Hass, ideally), lightly mashed with lime, coriander and olive oil and, for those feeling fancy, topped with a poached egg.
Of course, there’s been plenty of additions since then – crumbly feta, blistered tomatoes still on the vine, a scattering of chilli flakes – but even as simple as the original may be, I can’t think of another dish that an entire generation is willing to give up home ownership for. Order a flat white alongside for the full Australian breakfast experience (although ask any Kiwi and they’ll say that’s another thing we’ve stolen).
Where to try it
At the restaurant that made it a classic: Bills. There are four locations in Sydney, and the Eve Hotel puts you close to two, in Surry Hills and Darlinghurst.
– Steph Marinkovic
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is a nation of early risers – children start school at 7.30am and farmers are up before sunrise – yet breakfast is hearty, never rushed and, quite frankly, incomparable. Happy bellies are filled with fluffy idiyappam (string hoppers), appa (bowl-shaped fermented rice flour pancakes often loaded with an egg), cylinders of pittu, roti and coconutty curries such as fish, dhal, potato, egg and tomato. And the best bit? Pol sambol – a lively mix of fresh coconut, lime and chilli, which adds a sharp kick.
Other morning must-tries include kola kanda, a soupy porridge of pounded rice, coconut milk and nutritious greens (typically gotu kola, or pennywort); and mee kiri (buffalo curd) served with treacly kithul (palm) honey, which is also a popular dessert.
Where to eat it
Unfussy roadside kades serve the very best regional breakfasts, often cooking the curries in clay pots over open fires for added depth and flavour. At boutique hotel Fort Bazaar in the heart of Galle Fort, you can also try southern speciality ambulthiyal for breakfast, a dry, sour fish curry, marinated with goraka, black pepper and cinnamon. Upali’s in Colombo serves a wide variety of authentic morning staples.
– Emma Boyle
Greece
A Greek breakfast is the world’s best. Home to one of the world’s five Blue Zones, the country abounds in local produce and traditional dishes, many served in a generous breakfast spread.
Both inland and throughout Greece’s many islands, you’ll find goat’s cheese, fresh tomatoes, thick-as-clotted-cream sheep’s yoghurt, flaky filo pastries, often all topped with herbs from surrounding hillsides and local honey.
Where to eat it
Here in my own island, Crete (the European Capital of Gastronomy this year), I love the Ammos Hotel near Chania, where owner Nikos dishes up the world’s best proino, wafer-thin fennel pies.
For the island’s best bougatsa (a custard pastry) join locals at the century-old Kirkor in the buzzy main square of the island’s capital Heraklion. If you want a honey-drenched, nut-filled slice of filo pastry (kataifi) visit the shop of Giorgos Hatziparaskos, a 90-year-old master pastry maker, in the cobbled streets of Rethymnon town.
– Heidi Fuller-love
Mexico
Mexico’s go-to breakfast dish needs no improvement. Its fried tortilla triangles – slathered in a sharp salsa that softens their snap, and topped with a fried egg and crumbly cheese – are already sublime in their simplicity.
But add an extra flourish of fried plantain, smoked sausage, refried beans and some pickled red onion, and you have a glorious mess of tang and sweetness that revives even the most mezcal-worn traveller.
Such were the chilaquiles I was served at an establishment in Merida, the Yucatan Peninsula’s largest, yet often-skipped, city. If a therapist ever asks me to go to my happy place, there’s a strong chance I will transport myself back to a table under a wash of morning sun on its pastel-hued colonial streets, a plate of this Mexican medicine before me.
Where to eat it
Don’t be fooled by the anglicised name and sleek, Instagram-primed interiors of Marmalade Centro; its chilaquiles are as authentic as they come. Stay at the Casa Lecanda Boutique Hotel just yards up the road, and you can practically roll out of bed to a serving that will stick in your memory as much as it does to your fingers.
– Nuria Cremer-Vazquez
Japan
The traditional Japanese breakfast – rice, grilled fish, miso soup, pickled vegetables and often tamagoyaki rolled omelette – could seem, at first, to a western palate, more suitable for lunch or dinner.
But pay closer attention and you’ll find a near perfectly balanced start to the day in protein-rich fish and egg, miso’s gut-healthy probiotics, and a good dose of fibre from the vegetables. Sure, it may not be flamboyant as viennoiserie or as decadent as a full English, but its subtle pleasures can soon become addictive.
Where to eat it
I like to mix the high and low, so I’ll suggest two places to try it. The first is at a ryokan, Japan’s traditional inn. At the finest of these, such as Asaba or Gora Kadan, the traditional breakfast is elevated to an art form.
You’ll hold court in your room, dressed in flowing yukata robes, while countless patterned dishes filled with delicate morsels tumble before you. At the other end of the scale, visit one of Japan’s beloved “family restaurant” chains, such as Royal Host, for a slice-of-life experience where locals tuck into “breakfast sets” that cost little more than a thousand yen ($10).
– Patrick Hamilton Courtney
UK
“To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day” goes the saying. W Somerset Maugham, the Paris-born playwright, was remarking on the superiority of the full English.
Much fuss is made of the “deeply entrenched” British class system. Yet here we find a miracle, a thing so perfect it satisfies all the land, from the modest greasy spoon to the royal breakfast table (although the King probably dabbles in fancier sausages). Where dainty continental pastries and laughably two-dimensional arrangements of cheese fall short, the fry-up conquers all with its generosity of spirit.
To the usual suspects, the Full Scottish adds its triumphantly square Lorne sausages and tattie scones, the Ulster Fry its two kinds of fried bread, and the Full Welsh a helping of seaweed and cockles (fried in butter, so delicious).
This is why there are three things that every Briton away from home for too long yearns for: pubs, witty banter and a proper brekky.
Where to eat it
The Regency Cafe in London is thoroughly quintessential. It has been serving the real thing since 1946 and seemingly hasn’t changed a jot since. Stay up the road at The Goring if you want to sample the tradition at its most opulent.
– Jordan Young
The Telegraph, London
