That kind of awoke a question that I’ve had for a couple of decades now. I went through a real obsession with Thai food back then, and it was my goal to make Thai food for every meal. I got a couple of great cookbooks, but I noticed that there were no recipes for breakfast foods. Then it occurred to me – bacon, eggs, and pancakes are probably not standard fare in all nations. I’m pretty sure that what we consider “American breakfast” is more or less the same in English speaking countries and most of Europe.
In my area of China, typically it’s a bowl of the local greasy spicy “burning” noodles. Steamed meat buns are also popular. Warm soymilk is a common breakfast drink. People also do a lot of rice porridge and soft-boiled eggs. In more formal settings, you may encounter cooked vegetables and cold spicy vegetable dishes. There really isn’t an idea that certain foods are set aside for certain meals (lunch and dinner foods are identical) and breakfast foods are eaten throughout the day as snacks.
In Cameroon we could had a few choices. In tropical Southern Cameroon, a standard breakfast at home would be some baguette spread with the local imitation of Nutella, a truly nasty substance made mostly of congealed oil and sugar. To mix it up, we might get some avocado or even Laughing Cow cheese. Fruit was abundant.
In North Cameroon, at home people would universally drink bouille, a thin grain porridge (usually millet) flavored with tamarind or key limes and hopefully fortified with some milk, peanut butter, or sugar if the family could afford it. If people were feeling rich, they might have some savory doughnuts- which could be sour millet, chewy flour or spicy bean- to go with it. The diet was pretty monotonous.
On the street, for breakfast you could buy greasy omelets served with baguette slices and a spoonful of mayo, or my personal favorite spicy beans served with savory doughnuts.
It’d always be funny when we had get-togethers because we’d wake up in the morning and debate in all seriousness where to “go out” to breakfast- the bean lady by the big rock who has a bench to sit on? the bean lady down the street who has plates (usually you’d just suck the beans out of a plastic bag?) Or maybe the bean lady by the paved road who has the good hot sauce? Or maybe gasp we could get crazy and eat omelets!
My favorite breakfast culture is the Philippines, where usually you get yummy fish or Portuguese style sweet sausage and some rice flavored with pork fat.
I’ve never been much of a ‘breakfast’ person, but I’ve always loved the idea of miso soup, a’la Japanese preference. That may be traditional, though; I do not know if it is that common now or not. American and English breakfasts sound good to me about 10 o’clock at night. First thing in the morning, the idea of grease and sugar and carbs just makes me want to go back to bed!
In Bulgaria, people don’t really do breakfast. I once told my counterpart that Americans consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day and she looked at me like I was crazy.
OTOH, I could get cereal imported from Western Europe easily. It was expensive and I might have been the only person in my village who bought it, but it was there.
There are little kiosks all over the country that serve “topli zakuski” (warm breakfasts) but I think that’s an idiom that just means “hot snacks” since they’re open all day. They usually serve banitsa, a sort of flaky, buttery pastry filled with cheese (and sometimes with whatever’s seasonal: apple and pumpkin banitsa are both popular) or kifle, a roll filled with chocolate or cheese or sometimes just plain. (I like chocolate best.)
And yogurt, of course. Bulgarians eat yogurt all the time. One nice way to have it is mixed with honey and fresh fruit, with chopped nuts and sprinkled with cinnamon.
I used to work for Quaker Oats. At some point in the 1990s (IIRC), they introduced instant oatmeal to China. Now, in the U.S., most consumers want their oatmeal to have a sweet flavor, which is why Quaker makes flavors like “maple and brown sugar” or “apples and cinnamon”.
In China, the idea of a sweet breakfast food wasn’t terribly popular, so they created a different set of flavors for that market. The very idea of pork-flavored instant oatmeal turned my stomach.
In the South, leftover sambhar with rice from the night before with sweet hot coffee
In the North in Delhi, we went to a street vendor and got puris with spicy potato subji; in Rajkot, we had omlet
In Bombay, we also had omlet or samosas (samosas aren’t typical breakfast foods; my husband just loves them and will eat them anytime he can)
When I was in South America, Chile specifically, it was usually allulla (a type of bread that closely resembles a flattened American-style biscuit about four inches in diameter) with butter and jam, plus a hot coffee.
Similarly, when I was in France, it was hot buttered baguette and coffee, tea or chocolate. In many places, having cold food or drink for breakfast is considered bad for your health.
OMG. I will never ever forget breakfast in India. You wake up at 7 AM, and brush your teeth and sit down to a piping hot meal of prontis - square flatbreads with spices cooked into them, sometimes with mooli (daikkon? white horseradish?) or potatoes cooked inside, lightly fried. We’d have them with achar, or spicy pickled mango or lemon. A little bit of yogurt to cool the spice. Some buttermilk to wash it all down.
Oh yeah, in India, we had…shit, I’m blanking on what they’re called, probably because I didn’t particularly like them. These little doughy cakes that came with a hot sauce for dipping. They were pretty tasteless on their own, though.
This was in Hyderabad. Anyone have a clue what I’m talking about?
Eventually I discovered that dosas, which I much preferred, were also available.
Germans eat a continental-style breakfast with the addition of cold cuts & cheeses. They also have second breakfast mid-morning which involves coffee & cake and possibly a sausage.
The weirdest thing for me about breakfast in Australia and New Zealand was the inclusion of baked beans (& even canned spagetti).
God, I love prontis. And for some reason, thinking of prontis just reminded me of frankies and now I want one. With lots of Maggi sweet & spicy ketchup. Everything’s better with Maggi. Thanks a lot - now I’m hungry, too.
In Scotland, at least amongst people I know, there’s often not that much eaten for breakfast. Cereal and a glass of fruit juice, or often just some mugs of tea (or coffee) and a smoke, perhaps some toast. A full Scottish breakfast is very like an English or Irish one (basically sausages, bacon (Canadian style is close), black pudding, fruit pudding, eggs, baked beans (UK and Irish beans tend to the savoury, not sweet), fried tomatoes. Regional differences abound, but I think it’s fair to say that most people only eat the full thing a) when someone else is cooking it, b) as a weekend hangover cure.
The wikipedia article on Breakfast has descriptions for the following countries:
# 1 Africa
* 1.1 Nigeria
* 1.2 Ghana
* 1.3 Uganda
* 1.4 Senegal
# 2 Asia
* 2.1 China
* 2.2 Afghanistan
* 2.3 Hong Kong
* 2.4 India and Bangladesh
* 2.5 Japan
* 2.6 Nepal
* 2.7 Korea
* 2.8 Malaysia and Singapore
* 2.9 Indonesia
* 2.10 Burma
* 2.11 Pakistan
* 2.12 Philippines
* 2.13 Sri Lanka
* 2.14 Cambodia
* 2.15 Laos
* 2.16 Taiwan
* 2.17 Thailand
* 2.18 Vietnam
# 3 Australia and New Zealand
# 4 Europe
* 4.1 Continental breakfast
* 4.2 United Kingdom and Ireland
* 4.3 Northern Europe
* 4.4 Central and eastern Europe
* 4.5 Southern Europe
# 5 Latin America
* 5.1 Argentina
* 5.2 Brazil
* 5.3 Chile
* 5.4 Costa Rica
* 5.5 Cuba
* 5.6 Colombia
* 5.7 Ecuador
* 5.8 Dominican Republic
* 5.9 Mexico
* 5.10 Guatemala
# 6 Middle East
* 6.1 Mashriq
* 6.2 Iran
* 6.3 Lebanon
* 6.4 Egypt
* 6.5 Israel
# 7 United States and Canada
* 7.1 Traditional
* 7.2 Contemporary
Goodness, I haven’t heard of that in years. They used always to be on the breakfast menu at motels when we went on holidays as children. I’ve certainly never seen anyone eat them for breakfast at home.
For an argentinian, an american breakfast sounds strange and even disgusting (bacon in breakfast? yike!)
Coffe with milk pastries or toast plus orange juice is the standard breakfast down here.
If you go to Mcdonalds you can have a bagel with cheese, egg and ham.
This is supposedly what the Brits eat for breakfast . . . but not every day, I’m sure. You can hardly build an empire if you have to just sit there digesting until lunch.
