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Brighton, England
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
https://adamkhan.net/rambles/too-frou-frou-for-a-fry-up
e’ve begun to get visitors: Irit’s parents were here in Brighton for a couple of days. We showed them the sights — the Royal Pavilion, the Pier — and took them for a breakfast. Where to? I wouldn’t say we’ve tried them all, but we’ve tried quite a few combinations of eggs, (vegetarian) sausages, (vegetarian) bacon, hash browns, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, baked beans, toast and tea. The blogs and the Hardens restaurant review website converge on Tallula’s Tea Rooms as the best. We tried it, and to be sure the English breakfast is good but the ambience is just a bit wrong. There’s something inherently casual about the English breakfast fry-up, and Tallula takes things a tad seriously. English breakfast need not be a ruckus, but neither should a bit of ruckus engender disapproving looks. Even if the English breakfast is the main influence upon the classic hotel buffet breakfast, wherein all is hushed, eggs are generally scrambled and any fellows diners — except the morning joggers — are yet to step outdoors and are either bleary, wet from a shower or both; yes, even if related to such affairs, an English fry-up does not suit the silence of clink of crockery and cutlery. I want to feel okay going about my eggs and tea with unabashed gusto.
Another favorite of the reviewers is Nia. We tried that too, but though a bit more laid-back than Talulla, it still feels too frou-frou for a fry-up, and the food is not quite as good.
Irit likes the studenty Kensington Gardens cafe, but I find the food there just too poor to be both enjoyable and edible at the same time. It does work out about £2 cheaper than the abovementioned places per person, or about £4 rather than £6, but they scrimp on everything, from the non-Heinz ketchup in Heinz bottles to the generic teabag. And I think the place is a bit of a sham, as it looks and feels like an all-night diner but closes at 5pm.
Again, to me an English breakfast is a kind of naughty treat — not quite junk food but not the sort of thing to eat more than once a week or so unless work involves cross-country skiing — so when going for a fry-up I like the slumming aspect, which is why Talulla and Nia don’t quite work. So here’s the favourite we didn’t take them to: Wetherspoone’s, the pretty dismal pub chain. Dismal but surely the best breakfast bargain in town at £2.10. And the ingredients are definitely better than those used at Kensington Gardens, which costs precisely double.
Yes, Wetherspoones has a pretty awful atmosphere: the pubby side of it has loutish characters happy on beer before you’ve even begun breakfast while the dining part is smokey, brown and carpeted, like a 1970s airport departure lounge. So I love it, kind of. The flat screen TV shows news not sports because it’s still morning. But unless visitors have a sophisticated penchant for anorak irony I wouldn’t bring ‘em here.
So where we did take them is Tootsies in the Lanes. Yes, it’s a chain, but we’d been just once before and thought it was excellent. First, it’s got a large outdoor area, and — maybe it’s my Mediterranean upbringing — I prefer to eat outside whenever possible. Second, the food is genuinely excellent. They bring out good bread, pads of butter and good minature jams. They poach the eggs and pull that off nicely. The piggy part is quality sausage. And everything, especially the mushrooms, is done in a smokey chargrilled way. Irit’s Mum was puzzled by having a little bowl of baked beans with breakfast (beans in tomato sauce at breakfast?) but she liked it. They also ordered another round of the excellent mushrooms. The tea is teabags, yes, but they put two or three in a pot per person, and they’re good bags. And the staff is competent and friendly. The main drawback is that the place always seems empty. Usually I find that a dealbreaker, as the atmosphere is dull and the malaise spreads, but since we’re outside in a courtyard it seems to not matter. The staff aren’t hovering around, they’re inside, so you don’t feel self-conscious. There is no slumming aspect here. It’s a very nice place.
Nicely fed, we asked how Ehud Olmert can still possibly be prime minister over there. I was amazed at their response, which was to wonder why he shouldn’t be. Yes, we had a war, but the economy is going well and the government is doing an okay job. When we riposted that the economy is going well because of the reforms Netanyahu made, they said no way, it’s Olmert’s work, and that they despise Netanyahu, can’t stand to hear his name nor see his face, that with one look in his eyes one can see that everything he says is a lie. The person they’d like to see next as PM is Tzipi Livni, who, they said, has proven herself nicely.
Well. As the Hebrew goes, what can be seen from here can’t be seen from there; what looks like disaster from abroad may feel acceptable when there. Though one more victory like the Second Lebanon War, during which one third of the country cowered underground, and we’re sunk.
Later that day we walked past the Theatre Royal just when the first act of the Rocky Horror Show finished and the audience stepped outside for the intermission. Well, audience is not quite right, as many were dressed in the full regalia, that is, in not much at all beyond fishnet stockings and much make-up. So our guests were persuaded that Rocky is not We Will Rock You and we caught the second performance.
It was moving how enthused the audience was, how much they wanted the actors to do good. I’d attempted a buzz as in RHPS days of yore by filling up a bit on beer beforehand. The guests had wanted to have a drink somewhere near the theatre so we wouldn’t be late. Fine. They chose Il Duomo, a cafe next to the Royal Pavilion, an establishment Irit and I have agreed on avoiding. The sign outside, “real Italian coffee”, says it all. I avoid it because I don’t trust foreign invocations of Italian things, while Irit is repulsed by things Italian after two years in Rome — which is a shame I think and an overreaction, no matter how badly her boss there maltreated her and other staffers. Nowhere’s perfect and why not take the good from where you’ve been? The barman at Il Duomo was not only Italian but gay, angry and hairgelled to 1985. Follow that.
To continue the Italy bashing for one last moment, a couple of weeks ago I spotted a group of Italian teenagers on a school trip to the Royal Pavilion (it’s usually French kids). How did I know they were Italian? It was because of a certain bovine dumbness to the expressions, which seems all the more clear contrasted with the more pinched, aware look of young Britons. Was I judging my former hosts too harshly? Before I could decide, they decided for me. A squirrel was bandying about and a big young fellow with his pals began whistling to it, tapping his chest and walking backwards, trying to get the cute little rodent to come to him the same way you would a dog. Guileless. I suppose though it’s quite likeable really, and they have their geniuses among them.
Back at the Theatre Royale, a woman’s voice announces that no lighters can be lit in the auditorium. She’s booed, but good-naturedly. The curtain rises to plenty of cheer. The audience know the work almost as well as the performers and our visitors are in awe of the energy and enthusiasm in the theatre. The Narrator comes on, and banter begins with the audience, like pantomime for grownups. He is not Charles Gray but many of the performers seem to have been cast because they resemble the actors who played them in the movie. This has got to stop. This work needs a serious, ambitious new interpretation. And so I offer some casting, with Tim Burton perhaps directing?
Dr Frank-n-furter: Forest Whitaker
Brad: Johnny Depp
Riff-Raff: Paul Giamatti
Narrator: Mickey Rourke
I could go on, but it isn’t easy having a good time.