I know we have gone wildly OT here, but I will say that, ever since I discovered the farmers' markets, and what I call "real" eggs, we can't go back to grocery store eggs (even the organic, cage free variety). I have no idea what the difference is, but the eggs we get at the farmers' market are almost orange, they are buttery in texture and taste, and just the yum. Totally worth the extra trip.

Carry on.

Cage free versus battery can be massive. And it depends on whether the chickens are allowed outside to roam (as I said, free range) or whether they are barn chickens, who are kept inside. Free range find their own food, barn are better from a welfare point of view but are being fed on what battery chickens are.

I buy supermarket eggs out of necessity, and buy better welfare ones. But for taste, as ysolde highlights, get ye to a farmer's market or farm shop and buy some eggs from chickens which wander, find their own food. The yolks are vibrant and they taste of eggs. You can tell the difference, even if you don't know where the eggs came from (I went out for breakfast with friends at the weekend and their poached eggs were sourced well - a dark intense gold, and tasting so yum).

We did come close to walking out the restaurant because they said there would be a 20 min wait for a table.. but I'm glad we didn't. All around good breakfast. I also don't recall having walked out once food has arrived, but I have left a restaurant when they kept us waiting too long for the order to be taken.

+1. I only buy my eggs at the Santa Monica Farmer's Mkt. There is always a line for Mike's Eggs and for good reason. They are the freshest, most delicious eggs I have ever tasted. The shells are so thin that they are almost translucent. The yolks are a bright orange. They cook in a matter of seconds.

Exactamundo. OTOH, the choice you have at the supermarket is pretty much between house-brand conventional eggs, name-brand conventional eggs, and name-brand cage-free/organic/etc eggs.

AFAICT, the way to get the best eggs among them is to look at the packed-on date (if it has one, going for the most recent) or the sell-by date if it doesn't (going for the latest.)

As far as I can tell, actual free range eggs are not regularly available at a regular retail store near me, even at Whole Paycheck, nor have I seen eggs at the nearest couple of farmer's markets. I don't doubt farmer's market eggs will be better; as I said, the supermarket eggs were better near where I went to school.

I've had good free range chicken (and some awfully gamey free-range chicken, especially in certain parts of SE Asia -- I'm told but cannot confirm that it's because outside of Halal meat, it's not conventional to bleed the bird fully before butchering) and some free range chicken which was indistinguishable from very cheap conventional. I've also had some very good conventional chicken, which was not marketed as "free range."

So it goes. There's great beef out there and cruddy beef out there, and while grass-fed, corn-finished, or full-on corn-fed/feedlot beef produces a different flavor in each case, all three of those are available in ranges from great to cruddy.

Back on subject a bit....

I have two places I frequent 5-6 days a week for breakfast. One is a local luncheonette counter that fries eggs on a grill, the other is the main dining room of a five-star hotel. Both offer me something the other doesn't, and I enjoy them equally.

The first gives me cheap, greasy, and delicious standards I grew up on with coffee that I've used to clean scratches off my car in a pinch. I've never paid more than $12 for a couple of egg sandwiches, coffee, juice, and a short stack of pancakes. I've also never been in there for more than 20 minutes at a time.

The second provides a luxurious setting for entertaining, reading, relaxing, making phone calls, and simply enjoying the morning. When I walk in there is a stack of six local, national, and international newspapers at my table, at an approximate value of $20 in total. The coffee is from a local purveyor, served in fine china, and the menu offers interesting and healthier fare such as Chinese and Japanese speciality breakfasts, five kinds of local sausage, and so on. The average cost for breakfast is around $30-35, or ~20GBP. Is it worth it? Yes, for what it is. Assuming I sit for two hours, and the food should probably cost 2/3 of what I'm paying for it without a hotel mark-up, I just look at the additional $10-15 either way as a cover charge for the perfect service and additional amenities included.

Overall, it just depends on what role breakfast, and for that matter, what any meal, serves in your day.

Well said.
Sometimes a greasy spoon is the only thing that will hit the mark.
Especially on hangover mornings.

I guess it depends on the supermarket and the country/area in that case. There have been huge campaigns in the UK against battery farming, and the number of suppliers, not only of chicken products, but also of derived products (e.g. Mayonnaise) who have responded to this is huge. As a result, there is a new, widespread awareness of chicken rearing methods.

Free range (rather than barn-raised) eggs are commonplace in mos supermarkets. Some (e.g. Waitrose/Ocado) stock single and rare breed eggs as well. And yes, you can genuinely taste the difference. It's not like local small-scale suppliers (round here it tends to be small farmhouses with signs up in particular seasons, and honesty boxes half the time) but there's still a world of difference from the cheapie ones.

For example:

http://www.ocado.com/webshop/getSear...ree+range+eggs

I'm no great chef, but I can cook/acquire a better breakfast than what I'd usually order. There is little sense of a "value for money." Eg: I can buy top notch pancake mix and maple syrup that would last me for quite some time at under $20. Eggs and bacon are just plain easy to cook. Bread and bagels can be bought down the street for an insignificant cost.

Now brunch. Oh my.... That's a whole different kettle of fish. I can't wait till I am in Hong Kong next month for the Intercontinental's feast.

Expensive breakfasts have been hit or miss in my experience. Occasionally, it is readily apparent that they are making everything in house by the taste and texture. Quite often, it is equally clear that they are buying in lots of things pre-made. I like eggs benedict when I go to a nicer place for breakfast. Something as simple as a poached egg seems to really mess up a lot of restaurants. Hollandaise is another tough one for some reason.

Cheap breakfast can be just as good or bad. For example, in the US south, a plate of scratch made biscuits and gravy will be delicious and cheap.

My digestive system doesn't like to have much if a challenge until I've been vertical for a couple hours, so I tend to be rather hit or miss about breakfast in general, and a 'huge breakfast' for me is a medium-sized bagel with cream cheese and a Diet Coke. I've also got a lifelong aversion to cooked eggs unless they're hidden in something like a meringue pie, so fancy breakfast is utterly wasted on me.

A lot of US States have very tight legal definitions of what can be called a meat sausage or hot dog. Used to have an uncle in Big Food and there were enough states that required only meat + spices and preservatives that it wasn't worth it for them financially to run a different production line that had sausages with cheaper filler ingredients in them and ship them to states with lesser rules.

The American fast food restaurants probably just stick with the strictest state product requirements in the name of consistency from franchise to franchise. It's not necessarily high quality pork, but your McDonald's or Burger King breakfast sandwich is going to be 99% pork by weight.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Breakfast is psychologically interesting. People have strong feelings about it, which may not match their feelings about any other meal. I think it's almost always, to some extent, comfort food -- if you're having a hot meal then it's fatty and salty and filling, and we very rarely stray from the five or six different things we learned were "breakfast" foods when we were kids.

Breakfast is intrinsically pretty unadventurous. Eating something that isn't a "breakfast" food is impossibly daring. Spending more than twenty dollars is impossibly extravagant.

I only eat bagels and biscuits made with free-range wheat, not the stuff that is grown in rows on a farm.

You can taste the difference.

I don't know, those usually taste gamy to me.

As one who eats breakfast out at least 10 times as often as dinner, $10-13 is the sweet spot for a really good breakfast, and that usually means eggs Benedict or a really special omelet. I have never once had better by spending more, and $6-7 is fine for a simple plate of eggs, potatoes, and meat at Denny's or most any typical breakfast haunt. The $25-50 brunch buffets can be good, but for breakfast I generally don't want the prime rib/seafood/vast multitude of items that makes them expensive.