The art of... breakfasting boldly

Breakfast is the most honest meal of the day, and a reliable barometer of a new destination’s national character

- ANNA HART

Compared to lunch and dinner, meals tightly constrained by prevailing social norms and economic imperatives, breakfast is an orgy of individuality. Breakfast grants us a degree of creative freedom we never taste during dinner; at breakfast, we are truly at liberty to exalt in our eccentricities, trumpet our tribal loyalties (to tea or coffee) and ignore the wishes and plates of our companions. Breakfast can be respectably consumed at 6am or noon; it can acceptably be sipped or chewed; entirely sweet or entirely savoury; devoured in 90 seconds or nibbled lovingly for 90 minutes; it is habitually eaten under chandeliers, over one’s laptop, or in bed. The concept of breakfast is as supple as softly poached asparagus, as multifarious as muesli, and as scrambled as eggs.

And because breakfast is so deliciously mutable, it’s the meal that tells us most about a person, or a place. I’m not particularly interested in hearing what the likes of Queen Elizabeth I, Ludwig van Beethoven or Hunter S Thompson habitually ate for dinner, yet I’m fascinated by the thought of Good Queen Bess starting her day with beer and mutton stew, and barmy, brilliant Beethoven insisting on a black coffee made with precisely 60 ground coffee beans.