A Full English

Myself and Mrs Smile nipped of to a cafe for breakfast this morning. The menu had two Full English Options, 4 items for £4 or 6 items for £5, which isn't that bad, but how can only 4 items be considered a Full English ?

Bacon, Sausage, Egg, Fried Bread, Beans, Grilled Tomato ( not tinned ) Mushrooms, Black Pudding, Toast on the side and bread and butter to scoop up at the end.

Thats at least 9 so surely 4 items is a half English, even 6 isn't a full English

 

Sucker. Next time you ever go to America, go to Perkins. They do a tremendous 12 for a fiver.

 

And that's just drone attacks

 

soon you won't be able to ask for a full English without being called rascist

 

I had a Ulster fry up in Belfast the other week. The soda bread took breakfast to another level.

 

When I was in Ireland, I found the widely advertised and celebrated "Full Irish Breakfast" to be identical in every single way to the Full English.

Similarly with the Full Scottish. Having a sausage square rather than a regular sausage, doesn't make for a whole new breakfast species.

 

A full fry up (minus beans and black pudding which I'm not fans of) is the greatest way to start the day

My CFO is Asian and we both look at each other in a strange way when having breakfast in a hotel. She doesn't get the fry up and I don't get soup and noodles at 06.30

 

I had eggs Benedict rather than a full English in a cafe the other day.

Very nice it was. Very tasty.

Benedict is on to a winner with that one.

 

Just your regular mothers pride, cut diagonally into triangles.

I don't hold with rectangular or square fried bread.

 

Did you get white pudding then? Irish breakfasts should have that and soda bread.

 

You get Guinness with Irish breakfasts in Sligo .... or at least I did when I was there.

 

Why don't you compromise and get room service to bring you something you both like? I'd have suggested toast but the crumbs tend to get on the sheets.

 

Your colons must be heaving with detritus

 

Not mine.

I shat it all out, rolled it into a human shape, put an orange shirt on it and sold it to L*ton Town as an upgrade on their current centre forward.

 

There used to be a French bistro type cafe in Sheffield whose name for the life of me I can't remember but they did a Croque Monsieur to die for.

More useless and pointless information coming up.

 

That is the most middle class thing I'll read all day.

Cheese on toast m8.

 

I am still getting over that macdonalds have stopped the "big breakfast"

 

Fast food breakfasts are peculiar and I rarely use them.

There's something that's not quite right about them. They're sort of plasticky. Sort of polystyreney. Too perfectly formed eggs. Odd thin 6-inch ruler type bacon strips.

It's like someone saw eggs and bacon once, years ago and dimly remembers what they looked and smelt like and has directed replicas to be made. Close, but not quite the real thing. Just slightly off. Not the right consistency. Not the right smell and most definitely not the right taste.

No wonder they push the 'ketchup/brown sauce' option so hard on those things. You have to have some sauce on it to make it taste of anything.

Similarly for Subway. I had my first one of those recently - tempted by a 50p off voucher and the fact I was in the town early. It was deserted. The lad eventually appeared from out of the back and asked what I wanted. Well I wasn't sure and asked him what they'd got and got shown to a neon board with it all listed. I decided on a bacon buttie. So what sort of bread did I want? Well, mother's pride really if the truth be told, but what have you got? There were about 8 different types and I didn't recognise any of them. So because it said 'New! flatbread!' on the advertising sign, I asked for that. I thought well, flatbread can't be too bad. They can't make too much of a mess of that. It'll be like a flour tortilla or something I expect. Not a Ryvita type thing I'm sure.

However I did think I detected a slight raise of the eyebrow on the part of the Polish lad when I asked for it and he repeated it too in a slightly raised tone, "Flatbread?" So now I'm wondering whether Flatbread might not be wildly incompatible with bacon and the combination I'm asking for is the Subway equivalent of asking for fish fingers with strawberry jam spread on them. Whether when it comes out the flatbread is going to be incapable of containing the bacon and it's all going to be a big flatbread, grease 'n' bacon stodge in a wrapper. But what can I do? I can't back down now, so I confidently repeated "Yes, that's right, flatbread."

So then he disappeared out the back again for about 5 mins and left me to contemplate loads of different types of bread sticks cooking in an oven and wonder which one matched up with the pictures on the sign. I'm sure there were some that weren't listed and others that appeared on the menu and weren't cooking. I couldn't see any that could reasonably be described as 'flat' anyway.

So then the comrade reappears with the sandwich. What would I like with it? And there, behind the glass, is a flippin' salad bar! None of it was labelled so about half the stuff you could only guess what it was. However I selected lettuce and tomato from those that I recognised. There was no extra charge for all this salad on it apparently. At least as far as I could see, you could in theory have gone through the lot of them and created a monster sarnie. "Yeah stick some beansprouts on it, yeah, splash some thousand island on it yeah, pickles definitely, yeah all three types....."

It was £2 including a little bottle of orange juice, which was pretty good.

Eating it was very strange. The bread was a bit like a thin nan bread. Chewy and without taste - just like mother's pride - but brown and slightly stodgier. The combination did not work with the BLT that I had more or less ended up with. The bacon was not normal. The lettuce and tomato seemed OK though.

It's not something I'd repeat in a hurry. It was a bacon sandwich designed by big business. It was a weak 'tribute to the bacon sandwich'.

I don't want all those stupid choices. At least McDonalds knows that you only want a choice between red and brown as an addition. It's easy! Red or Brown! Subway can't even get that right.

And as for bread, I want a choice between white sliced or a floury white bap and that's it. No more is necessary. That's how the bacon sandwich works.

 

cool story, but it sounds like you ****ed it all up by picking the wrong bread.

 

Baked beans have no place in a full English. Neither does a hash brown.
As part of a fry up they are both essential.

 

the cafe next door to sainsburys in pinner is top notch and they do a full english for a fiver. at least they did 3 years ago. i wonder if all those dreamy east european ladies still work there

 

Who on earth goes to Subway for a bacon sandwich? I've never heard such nonsense.

 

Who on earth goes to subway?

 

as much as I hate fast food I am fond of a sausage mcmuffin once in a while

 

I shall pay special notice when I pass tomorrow.

 

the Full English most certainly CAN ( and should ) include beans, but NEVER a hash brown. It should also include black budding and everything else listed so far but definitely NOT CHIPS!
Bacon sandwiches should NEVER be purchased in Subway.
McDonalds 'breakfasts' are a pale imitation, but yes, the sausage and egg mcMuffin is a thing of beauty, and should be on their menu all day, not just in the morning.

 

I would also like to add that the perfect Full English is to be experienced in a 'greasy spoon' type cafe, not a fast food outlet/pub chain/supermarket restaurant. However, i have long felt that the Full English in a greasy spoon cafe experience has fallen victim to the smoking ban, as greasy spoon cafe's now smell of disinfectant, whereas the smoke used to mask that/.

 

Sorry going to have to disagree. The Baked bean first imported into the UK in the late 1800s by Fortnum & Mason from the States iirc. It's most certainly not English.


The contents of a full English will vary depending on where in England you come from.

For me a full English is:

Sausage, Bacon, Black Pudding, Fried Bread, Mushroom, Eggs (Fried or Scrambled), Tomato. Served with a plate of bread & butter and a mug of strong tea.

However I prefer a fry up which omits the tomato and adds baked beans and a hash brown or potato cake.

 

I used to work with a giant. A proper fee-fi-foe one. 6 foot 10 with crazy hair and a diamond in his front tooth.

When we went to the cafe, he always used to ask for the 'breakfast to end all breakfasts' with a double helping of everything, but with an extra plate of chips on the side.

Everyone knows you don't mix chips directly IN the full English, but I do think it's perfectly acceptable to have chips on the side if you're very hungry indeed or a giant.

 

But did you stop to think where the rest of it came from?

Sausage (German) Bacon (Danish) Black Pudding (Northerners) Fried Bread, Mushroom (hippy's) Eggs (China/India) Tomato (South American) Served with a plate of bread & butter (New Zealand) and a mug of strong tea (Chinese)








Anyway Full English- fry up.. same thing to me.

 

Sausages aren't really german and our's were every bit as good as theirs until shortages during/after the war caused us to pack ours out with fat and/or cereals. Somehow big business made sure we didn't ever revert back for quality. Bacon the same, our preference for water and emulsifiers still astounds me.

As for eggs, when was the last time you got a four yolker?

 

1800s is plenty early enough for baked beans to be adopted. The Indians weren't making spicy curries before the Portuguese introduced the chili but it doesn't stop curry being Indian.

As for the romanticised greasy spoon, they are almost all horrible. Poor bacon, sausages with about 15% meat content and food prepared without skill or care. And as for the Half a fried tomato - what the **** is that all about.

I'd never eat in a greasy spoon given the choice, except the cafe rest in Shepherds Bush.

 

and sausages arent really English either.. or bacon apparently. Both go back as far as the ancient Greeks so its said.
I threw in the German's for the reason that they are more famed for their sausages and the Danes because well isnt that were most of UK bacon comes from?

Guess i was trying to suggest that we cant really claim most of the ingredients as being any more (or less) English than the baked bean.. though we can claim the process of frying them and eating them for breakfast as our own.