Yes. The first time we went to Austria and Germany my wife totally loved German breakfasts. She’s Swiss from 250 years back, so the genes must have stuck. She sometimes eat cold cuts for breakfast even today.
I’ve had soup for breakfast in Japan and Hawaii, which was very good. Our quite fancy restaurant in Tokyo had an American breakfast which consisted of soggy steak fries, runny eggs, a salad, and cocktail franks standing in for sausage.
I mostly get to see what is served in hotels, so it is hard to tell. In the Brunetti books, set in Venice, they seem to mostly eat pastry for breakfast.
When I lived in Poland years ago the standard breakfast was bread with sliced tomatoes on it. The tomatoes were usually very fresh and tasty, so this was a delicious way to start the day. And most people drink tea along with it.
Earlier today I spotted the Swedish intern in my place making her breakfast: a salad of tomato, lettuce and ham.
My Dutch colleague eats some kind of cake called ontbijtkoek.
When I stayed in a hotel in Greece we were served natural yogurt with honey, and a slice of very sweet, lemony cake.
In Hong Kong, a traditional breakfast is congee with some savory sauce with garlic and fish in it - horrible sitting next to someone who’s eaten that, first thing in the morning. ETA: though most people I would see would have instant noodle soup with a fried egg floating in it, sometimes with spam or cocktail franks. I got quite hooked on that too.
Many people in hailand eat this concoction called jok for breakfast. It’s a mushy rice “stew” that I find absolutely horrible.
There are also bits of fried dough called pa thong ko, a Chinese import that some of us have dubbed “chromosomes,” because they come out looking like a three-dimensional X. Sort of a super-greasy non-sweet doughnut, but they’re actually quite good with coffee.
I was going to say something much along the same lines. You often get baked beans with your eggs and bacon and toast (and often a sausage and/or a grilled tomato) at cafes and hotels if you get the “Big Aussie Brekkie” type meal, but as far as I can tell people here, when eating breakfast at home, tend to go for Weetbix, Toast (popularly with marmite/vegemite or jam), cereal (although I must admit I don’t personally know anyone who eats cereal for breakfast, but the supermarkets are full of it and it does sell very well), or - if you’ve got the time- bacon and eggs with toast. And, of course, coffee/tea/orange juice/milo (take your pick) as an accompanying beverage.
The Malaysians and Singaporeans have this lovely stuff called Kaya, which is a coconut jam-type concoction. They serve it on toast with butter and coddled eggs in the morning, with a cup of Kopi (coffee with condense milk) or Kopi O (black coffee). An excellent way to start the day!
Also, Nasi Lemak is very popular in that part of the world for breakfast, but like many other foreigners, I’ve never really been on board with the “Incredibly Spicy Food first thing in the morning” school of thought, but I know it amuses the locals to play “Point and laugh at the gwailo who just discovered how spicy sambal is at 7:30am in the morning” when the opportunity arises.
In Southern Spain, most people still have pan con tomate (bread, garlic, olive oil, and smeared tomato) or just bread with olive oil for breakfast. Coffee, hot chocolate, or orange juice to drink. Sometimes a large slug of brandy in the coffee!
In Morrocco we ate large flatbread smeared with honey, accompanied by mint tea.
Typically, I had warm fresh Brötchen fetched from the local bakery with Nutella or Zuckerrüben Sirup and Strong Coffee mixed half and half with stabilized cupboard milk. There was also a plate of “raw” salt cured bacon, various sausage, head cheese, salami, cheese with Bauern brot and butter. Occasionally cornflakes.
Most of those breakfasts I ate were in hotels; though my Kiwi hostmother did insist on making these huge full breakfasts and trying to pass it off as something she does all the time (ie Christmas morning according to my hostbrother). I suspect that if my homestay had been longer than a few days she’d have gone back to her normal habits. Aussie hostmom just asked if I’d like some toast and sat infront of me smiling while I put vegemite on (unbeknowest to her I’d been in Oz long enough to taste it and know to use it very sparingly).
Dutch here: this is the typical fare for us too with or more types of bread (usually “plain” white or brown bread and some sweeter variants and/or croissants or Frysian dark rye).
Alternatively, people eat yoghurt with dried or fresh fruit, nuts and/or syrup, or different types of porridge (I used to eat oat meal porridge and Brinta - instant wheat porridge - a lot as a kid).
In Taiwan, the more traditional items include 飯糰 (glutinous rice ball with filling inside - usually pork sung and a few other things… has a nice texture, both chewy and crunchy), 蛋餅 (scallion pancake w/ egg), 燒餅 (flaky sesame flatbread that can be filled with meat, egg, or 油條), and 豆漿 (soybean milk - either sweet or salty, chilled or warm). But most people in my generation eat toast and other westernized breakfast items. Back when my mom was growing up there, she ate things like rice porridge with assorted side dishes (seaweed, tofu, etc).
Possibly. Looks of similar substance, but the ones here come out in an X shape. The local name, pa thong ko, is probably just a different Chinese dialect.
EDIT: Ah yes, it has a section in that link for Thailand, farther down the page.
The beer I had for breakfast was good, so I had one more for desert!
I live in California but we have access to a lot of different Armenian foods and products. My family would always eat a breakfast consisting of black tea, sour cream, plain yogurt, jams and jellies, halvah, various greens like mint, tarragon, parsley (those types of greens), feta cheese and sometimes soft boiled eggs. everything was put in or wrapped around Arabian pita bread.
My grandma used to cut up pieces of the bread and cheese and mix it into my tea. Not sure what I was thinking when I used to eat/drink that.
This thread makes something of a case that United States is the one of the least breakfast-oriented cultures in the world. Very few Americans eat as much, or as interesting, breakfasts, as those enumerated here… unless they’ve imported such breakfast ideas from elsewhere.
When I was in Russia, breakfast and dinner were part of my accommodations. Typical breakfasts were–
Buterbrodi. Bread with cheese on top; more rarely with meat or cheese spread. My least favorite breakfast, in no small part because I suspected my hostess of not infrequently putting it out the night before, leaving the bread to get stale.
Omelettes. Small, with no filling–just fluffy fried egg, usually with something mixed in. What? I’m actually not sure. I originally thought it was sausage, but as time went on I became convinced it was small bits of bread that had been fried a bit. Fairly tasty; I’d enjoy having one right now, if I knew just how to make one.
Blini. Crepe-style pancakes. Oh, these were delicious–easily one of my favorite things, food-wise, from Russia. Sometimes served with jam, sometimes with tvorog–a sort of sweet cheese product, hard to describe if you don’t know it–sometimes rolled into little burritos filled with ground meat and smetana–Russian sour cream–on the side. I absolutely must figure out how to make these.
**
French toast**? Not battered and fried; I think they may have just been fried with butter, but again, I was never 100% sure. Usually had a dusting of powdered sugar. Again, these were delicious.
I may be forgetting a few things, and there was the occasional fried egg with meat and bread on the side as well, but those were the staples. There was always tea–I drank it with every meal. My hostess would often include a smallish tomato sliced into wedges or quarters on the side, which left me in a bit of a pickle–I’m no fan of tomatoes, but leaving it would have been rude. Plus, the diet had a distinct lack of veggies in it. A bit of salt helped me choke it down, and I’d damn near developed a taste for the things by the time I left.
Growing up in a Polish family, our breakfasts tended to be eggs, crepes, or open-faced sandwiches with a selection of deli meats and cheese. (edit: Oh, and a weisswurst-type of sausage on weekends was a breakfast treat.) That was fairly common throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Breakfasts in Hungary were very similar, with perhaps a bit more pastry items in the mix. The most important meal in these cultures tended to be lunch. When I was growing up, we ate a fairly light breakfast, then a big lunch/dinner @ 2 p.m. or so, and then a light supper (kind of a reprise of breakfast) at around 7 p.m.
