The best international breakfast foods I’ve encountered are:
in Brazil they always served us lots and lots of fruit for breakfast, usually melon and pineapple and banana, along with some fried cheese (yummmmm) and cous cous (which was corn based) and white bread.
in Trinidad they often eat doubles, which are little sandwiches of curried chick peas (they look like this and taste divine)
in England I always loved the big weekend breakfast, which included sausages (always with a yummy veggie option) and baked beans (a combination I love), fried mushrooms, tomatoes, hash browns, and sometimes bacon. And of course sweet milky tea. Drool. Yummy, but not every day.
Round here in Toronto almost all of the breakfast foods available are sweet pastries, which I really don’t like all that much. I’d kill for a doubles stand or even some fresh tropical fruit. (Is that too much to ask? Where are the Canadian pineapple plantations, I ask ya?) Mostly I get by with smoothies and the occasional bacon breakfast sandwich.
So, what are other great breakfasts you’ve experienced around the world?
Cafe y churros in Spain:
Traditionally it’s chocolate y churros, but I just couldn’t warm up to the Spanish version of hot chocolate (to me, it tasted and looked a hell of a lot like lukewarm chocolate pudding… blllaaaaargh), but the churros were excellent and much improved by dunking in hot sweet coffee. Mmmmm.
Pao de Queijo in Brazil:
I don’t remember any couscous in Brazilian breakfasts, but that might be a regional thing (I stayed in and around Brazilia, the capital). What I do remember is *pao de queijo * - little fluffy buns with a crispy outside and a sharp cheese taste - and lots and lots of fresh mangoes.
Camping breakfast:
Eggs, pancakes (made from just-add-water mix), bacon and coffee. All burnt. Like all other camping food, ridiculously tasty and satisfying, despite the fact that it would be virtually inedible under any other circumstances. Washed down with random fruit-flavoured beverage made from drink crystals. Mmmmmmm.
When I was in Israel, they always had what I believe to be cold, possibly pickled fish available for breakfast.
I never ate any of it. I’m picky about fish at the best of times.
It was also funny seeing some of my tourmates have fits because at breakfast coffee was served with cream–not nonfat, nondairy creamer. (At dinner, coffee was served with creamer, not cream. Yes, the restaurants we ate at all served Kosher food–or if they didn’t, it was non-obvious to me, the non-Jew tourist).
I do enjoy breakfasting on fruit, cheeses, and bread products. Except when the fruit have seeds in them and I don’t realize it.
And I can’t believe I was 31 years old before I experienced the taste of bacon or sausage WITH maple syrup. I could do without the pancakes tho. Give me breakfast sausages alongside maple baked beans. Drool.
Maybe this is a good place to note the trans-Atlantic contrast in diversity of breakfast sausage. In the UK there are dozens of types to be had in any grocery store. In contrast, I went to a huge grocery store in my Toronto neighbourhood, which in fact has no fewer than four sausage sections (there are a lot of Italians and Portuguese in these parts) but only TWO varieties of breakfast sausage in the whole place: regular and maple. Two! UK dopers, when come back, bring breakfast sausage! (We’ve got your salami needs covered, tho.)
I had donuts fresh out of the oven on a beach in Sète, does that count?
My Brazilian breakfasts are those little breads with salty butter, oily soft cheese, mango, papaya, that 40,000 amp spark right behind the eyeballs coffee.
SOS, aka Shit on a Shingle, aka biscuits with sausage gravy.
I think it’s an acquired tasted…Ivylad’s cousin was visiting from England and she didn’t care for it…she spread jam on her biscuits instead. All that lovely white, milky, thick, sausage gravy gone to waste.
You know, that spark could have come from the shower.
Pao de queijo ROCKS! Also, a little banana com ninho. Oh, and real juice. Made from polpa da fruta that you can either buy frozen in an emeergency or fresh in a batiladora.
86 the mushrooms and toss in some white pudding and then we’re talking. Oh, and if there’s people around who don’t know any better than some black pudding too.
I agree. The traditional breakfast in El Salvador typically includes refried beans, fried plantains and sour cream, with plenty of coffee to drink. I don’t have this very often because of my high cholesterol, but it’s delicious. In fact, my sis made this just this morning for her Christmas potluck at work, except she made rice and beans instead of just plain beans.
