When I was a kid, we had a “proper” breakfast on Sundays which was bacon, eggs and fried bread. As an adult, I’ve done a full English at home but it’s not very often as it takes too much time when I’m trying to get out of the house for the morning commute. Since working at home, I still don’t bother because it’s too much food, and calories that just don’t get burned during the day. I might run to a bacon and fried egg butty, just occasionally.
The full English is a necessity at music festivals, usually as a hangover cure and something to bolster us for a day of singing, dancing and drinking! Oh, how I wish for those days again
Personally pretty much every time I have done one a hangover has been involved. I don’t think ever in my life have I just had it as a standard breakfast, before work or school or something.
That picture is, I’m sorry to say, a pitiful hotel attempt at a full English.
Everything is dried out under the heat lamps (They’ve hidden the bacon for the sake of decency but I can still see it) and they’ve added that triangle of hash brown in a nod to internationalism but there no excuse for it.
And look at the sausage! a bargain-basement mystery meat special. Shame on them.
The best ones are often done in small B&B’s. They make them to order and often include local ingredients
Last year we went to Malta and stayed at a hotel which offered a buffet which, along with fruit, omelettes made to order, and pastries, offered all the ingredients for a fry-up, but scrambled eggs instead of fried. Major yum. I would never try makine something like that myself, but I’m happy to partake when I can.
The last few times we’ve been in B&B’s, we’ve been offered the chance to have a fry up. I might choose a few items, but never the entire thing. My husband typically goes for porridge with bacon or sausage, which is something we do at home as well.
Yes! Two of my favorite memories: a little English inn, we’d planned an all-day walk, and had gotten up early to find the path (following a little mimeographed pamphlet from 1942 that I’d found in a library in Wisconsin). The proprietor met us at the door carrying two huge platters of… well, everything. We did less of a walk that day, more of a waddle.
Similar experience at a little Irish pub in the midwest. They started opening up at 5am to show European soccer matches… and serve The Big Irish Breakfast. I was impressed by the rashers of Irish bacon, black pudding, field mushrooms, even had liver and dark soda bread (with Irish butter, mmmm…).
I don’t have a full English or Irish breakfast often—as often as I might have full American-style brunch—but I’ve never regretted it.
Visiting my folks in Ohio a couple of months ago I re-discovered goetta. Oh man it is so good with a big holiday breakfast. I did over-easy eggs, pan-fried green peas, and goetta. Soooo tasty.
*Goetta is the southeastern Ohio equivalent of scrapple or corned beef hash, but it’s much much more flavourful than both of them.
Which is weird because England is the only place I’ve found the triangular, thick, small hash browns, but that doesn’t make it impossible that it is a nod to internationalism because, for instance, Teppanyaki was started as a Japanized version of American food but became an Americanized version of Japanese food, or something in between.
I love me a full English. One of the best I’ve had was in a tiny little town in Somerset. The restaurant was in a converted double-decker bus (they also had a train car). If it was for tourists it must have been local tourists because it wasn’t near anything touristy.
I think it’s more of a hotel thing than a tourist thing - though if you’re a tourist staying in a hotel it’s going to look touristy. It’s often available in what you would think of business hotels, ranging from the very cheap upwards, When I (not very frequently) traveled for work I might indulge, basically because someone else was paying.
To address the OP - we’ve cooked one maybe half a dozen or a dozen times these last 40 years, each time for a specific reason (like there would be no chance to eat anything else substantial for a long time that day.) But I do remember when I was growing up - nearer 50 years back - my mother went through phases of setting us off for school with a cooked breakfast. I think that may have been a winter thing. (I also remember breakfasts of cereal, and an odd phase where we were fed grapefruit every morning.)
A little side question: I’ve never been to Britain, but I’ve been to some places (Ibiza, Fuerteventura, some Greek islands) in hotels that had a big contingent of British guests, and the breakfast buffets always had all the typical fried and cooked items you expect for a British breakfast, plus everything for a continental breakfast (I guess that’s the proper expression for a typical European breakfast, if there even is). Is this typical? Do British people like to indulge in a full breakfast in their holidays? Some of my carnivorous friends sure liked to eat fried bacon and sausages for breakfast and approved of that British custom.
A heavy breakfast full of fats, carbs and proteins is generally considered to be part of a good hangover cure - so in those holiday destinations where the tourists from the UK are wont to over-indulge, availability of a good cooked breakfast is essential …
Ah, I see, a good hangover cure and also a solid foundation for the oncoming day with its drinks. Clever strategy. We Germans have a simpler recipe: start the day with the last drink you had last night, so a beer for breakfast for you!
