Comparing inexpensive versus expensive breakfasts....
 

MODERATOR'S NOTE: These posts were split off of http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/dinin...estaurant.html into their own thread since they were not on-topic for that one.

Civility and good-naturedness are still expected :) And let's not try to argue that someone's tastes are "wrong." Thank you.

Yup, I sure miss sliding off the plastic seats because of that film of grease covering every surface, the sausage " meat " that tastes of a school chemistry lesson, the bacon the looks and tastes like cardboard.

This, however, is a proper breakfast.

http://www.simpsonsinthestrand.co.uk/menus.php?id=1

Full English is a great breakfast but I've never understood why tomatoes are part of it. Wouldn't some sort of potato fit better with the rest?

I counter your Simpsons with Colby's in Portsmouth NH, but I can't post a link because I am iPhonically challenged

Holy cowpies! The prices! Is that, like, the caffeteria at Buckinham Palace or something?

Tomatoes are common ingredients in American omelettes, and it's fairly common to see sliced tomato on fried egg sandwiches, not to mention the old classic BLT. With the Central and South American culinary influence increasing in the US every year, salsas are becoming more common in American breakfast foods, as well.

£20? For breakfast? Does it come on gold plates, served by Playboy bunnies?

if you don't spend much money on food then more than likely it's not going to be of good quality.
I'd quite happily spend £20 on a great breakfast in a magnificent dining room in much the same way as some people think nothing of spending a hundred dollars on dinner.

I've never been much for ambiance, and would rather not pay for the magnificent dining room regardless of the meal.

Having been catching up on this thread missing yesterday, I was not sure what constitutes a "great breakfast" that would justify a $20 charge, just on the food (going on the theory that everything in the UK costs roughly what it does in the US, but in GBP rather than USD)... I've paid $20+ for breakfast a few times as a matter of convenience (and a couple times had it included in a hotel rate where paying otherwise would have been pricier than that), but I can't say I've ever had the food justify the cost increase over a $9 breakfast at a good local diner, and in many cases I'd have been happier with a $4 "Everyday Value Slam" Denny's or the $4 "big breakfast" at McDonalds. There are only so many ways to cook scrambled eggs, and most of them make them worse than the really simple ones.

$100 on dinner is (typically) going to be very different food than a $20 dinner. In cases where a $20 or $40 buffet is very different food than the diner breakfast, it's probably stuff I don't want to even think about at 9am.

That is at least a rather impressive array of meat for your £20; not what I'd normally want for breakfast -- but it might well be interesting to try it, once. Just, as with just about any food in the UK, best to think about £1 as $1 and not of the exchange rate.

http://www.urbanspoon.com/cities/233...ast-lunch/menu

Looks like my kind of place.

My own local breakfast of choice:
http://restaurantbaywatch.com/pages/menu1.html

Nail on the head.

I suppose it depends how much you value what goes into your body and from what I've seen on my many visits to the States most people don't seem to care what and how much bad food they eat.

Personally I think a breakfast comprising Cumberland sausage ( that's whole sausages made from good quality prime meat cuts and not patties made from what's left on the floor of the abattoir ), proper bacon and not pork belly, Stornoway Black Pudding, fried mushrooms,baked tomatoes and free-range eggs - plus toast,pastries,juice and fresh coffee all for £20 represents excellent value for money

And Simpsons-in-the Strand is an iconic London restaurant that has played hosts to diners including Vincent Van Gogh, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone.

Yes you can find it cheaper and quicker at the Golden Arches if that's all the time and money you can afford on one of life's great pleasures but I know which I'd choose any day.

Cured pork belly /is/ proper bacon on this side of the Atlantic, and while the cheap oscar-meyer-ish stuff you'll find at Denny's or similar places is decidedly so-so (and no bacon at all is to be found on the "big breakfast" platter at McDonalds) really good American bacon is not hard to find and every bit as good as any back bacon.

As I said, the range of meat available does sound like a pretty good value once you account for the dollars-pounds issue. Rather a heavy breakfast for my taste, but a good value.

Some people like to pay for ambiance, some don't. Some will find the history more interesting; some don't.

If breakfast is one of life's great pleasures for you, by all means, enjoy. For me, it tends to be a sign that I'm up too early and is a necessary evil to carry me over until lunch.

You know the old saying - breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.
I tend to use Simpsons for breakfast on special occasions - either having been up all night carousing or lining the stomach with a solid base for a long day of imbibing ahead.
Normally I'm a cup of Joe and slice of toast and Marmite man.

But you won't get good quality eggs to make those scrambled eggs with. They'll be pale yellow, not bright golden and rich with flavour, from battery hens, not free range. Your sausage will be filled with filler and cereals. Your bacon will have been injected with water to bulk it up. In other words, if you eat a $4 breakfast, you'll be served the cheapest crap imaginable because they can't afford to serve high quality food for that and make a profit.

While I'm with the £20 is too much crowd - I think you are paying a surcharge for the place, not the food - for a good quality English/Scottish breakfast (the Scottish has a few other interesting items on it like haggis, tattie scones and clootie dumpling) I'd happily pay over a tenner if I knew they were using the best of ingredients, not the worst. Breakfast is a speciality of my house - I work hard to source good quality ingredients, particularly sausage and black pudding, usually getting them from the local farmers market because they make such a difference to the quality of the breakfast.

If you can't taste the difference between good and bad eggs, or other breakfast items, then please feel free to enjoy your $4 breakfast. But please don't tell those of us who are able to detect a difference that there is no difference :(

No, I've never run across it, although google shows that it's out there.

A higher price is hardly any guarantee of anything different, although one might be getting better at any specific instance.

From what I can tell, there's little correlation in many cases in the US between price and the quality -- mainly freshness -- of eggs, and I've been more frequently disappointed by overpriced breakfasts at hotels than inexpensive breakfasts at diners. Nor at the local batch of fancified breakfast places can I tell the difference in the eggs.

Nor, cooking breakfast at home, have I seen a difference in taste between the cage-free organic eggs and the cheap supermarket brands. Around here in California, they're all trucked in and kind of meh. When I was in a more rural area for college (nearly 20 years ago) even the cheap supermarket ones were better than we get here, or than I was able to get as a kid in NYC.

None used on the posted ingredients of the McDonald's sausage patty, and given the scrutiny they get about ingredients, I'd expect that to be legit. Sugar and preservatives and undoubtedly a very cheap grade of ground pork.

Wouldn't that just cook off, regardless? Especially given the tendency of a lot of places here to cook bacon utterly to death.

I can definitely tell the difference between good and bad bacon, but tend to have better luck with bacon in sandwiches or on hamburgers than on even the priciest of breakfasts I've been exposed to.

Which sums up most of the reasons why the US is currently suffering from such an enormous obesity crisis.

Cheap, poor quality food and lots of it.

Nor, cooking breakfast at home, have I seen a difference in taste between the cage-free organic eggs and the cheap supermarket brands.


If you can't see and taste the difference between a free-range egg and one from a battery chicken it's really not surprising you consider McDonalds to be fine purveyors of breakfast repast.

cage-free and organic have nothing to do with (and have no impact on) taste.

In much the same way as farmed salmon tastes exactly the same as wild salmon ?

Or indeed a battery chicken tastes exactly the same as a chicken allowed to roam free ?

:rolleyes: