Many years ago we were excitedly choosing all sorts of delicacies at the breakfast buffet at our hotel in Yerevan, Armenia, when another guest glanced at our plates, shrivelled their noses in a very patronising manner and exclaimed, “Ugh! Salad? For breakfast?” It’s widely considered to be most important meal of the day but so many people seem to be set in their ways when it comes to eating a hearty breakfast. So much that hotels all over the world seem to offer pretty much the same fare. Western visitors are often offered fried food such as bacon, sausage and eggs with bread-based accompaniments and Eastern visitors are usually offered rice or noodle dishes. All these dishes are generally familiar to the tourist and often don’t reflect the traditional breakfasts of the country they are visiting.Here are some of the world’s best breakfasts.
Maybe it’s because people don’t feel so adventurous first thing in the morning, and that’s fair enough, but they may be missing out. Thing is, we’re British and can have bacon and eggs any time we like. (Although, to be honest, we haven’t cooked a fry-up for years as it’s quite a lot of effort.) We’d much rather eat a typical breakfast using local ingredients from the country that we are visiting.
It’s quite common for hotels to ask their guests to pre-order breakfast. It makes sense, they know what they need to order in beforehand and this can help minimise food waste. There is usually a form with tick boxes and you can choose from a variety of typical breakfast offerings. But if you do want to eat like a local, we’ve learned that many hotel restaurants are happy to cook you a regional breakfast.
It’s Often Okay to Go Off-Menu
It all started in Uganda when we breakfasted at a lodge with a local guide. We were eating standard fare but our curiosity was piqued when something entirely different was brought out for him. On asking, we learned that it was a rolex – a chapati with a layer of omelette on top, then rolled into a spiral cylinder, perfect for munching on. So the next day we asked the lodge staff if it would be possible for us to have a rolex for brekkie and they were happy to oblige. It’s great – tasty and filling – a good start to the day.
In Nepal we were given a standard pre-order form to complete (eggs, bacon, sausage, toast…) to pre-order breakfast for the following morning. We politely asked whether it was possible to have a local breakfast instead. We didn’t specify any dish – just asked for local food. They were delighted. The following morning we were served a marsala omelette accompanied by a joyous curry and roti with home-made yoghurt. It was delicious.
Japan also offers some of the world’s best breakfasts. A Japanese brekkie often comprises grilled fish, vegetables and pickles, maybe with tofu, dumpling and an omelette.
These are accompanied with a bowl of rice, into which you could crack a raw egg mixed with shoyu (soy sauce) – the egg sort of cooks in the heat of the rice – or that famous smelly fermented soybean concoction, natto, maybe with some sliced negi (similar to spring onion). Just grab a slice of nori (dried seaweed), place it over the rice, then using a pincer movement with your chopsticks grab a portion of rice with the nori. Scrumptious. (It’s worth noting that if you are at a breakfast buffet in Japan the eggs on offer may well be raw – be careful when cracking them.)
A dosa for breakfast in South India is an absolute joy. This is a pancake traditionally made from rice and dal (lentils) which are ground to form a batter and then fermented. The batter is cooked on a hot plate to form a large pancake and served with chutney – coriander, coconut and tomato are particularly popular.
In Kerala, this breakfast comprised vada, which is a doughnut made from fermented pulses and a puffy bread puri served with sambar, a delicious stew made from lentils, vegetables and spices. Multiple chutneys feature as well to provide a variety of flavours that soak into the vada and puri.
Madagascar is famous for its amazing landscapes and unique flora and fauna and isn’t really known at all for its cuisine. But its breakfasts are great – really hearty and filling. If you want to try a local breakfast, it is best to request it the night before because it takes some time to cook. Rice is the staple in Madagascar, so a typical breakfast would involve vary sosoa, or rice porridge. Sometimes it is served with zebu (a kind of cattle) steak for a very rich and decadent breakfast.
Mofo baoline are fried doughballs. They are very fluffy and filling and will really set you up for the day.
Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Breakfast Again
Many countries offer breakfasts that aren’t necessarily only eaten in the morning. When the food is this good, why restrict the dish to the morning?
One of the world’s best breakfasts is gallo pinto from Costa Rica. It’s so popular it is often eaten for lunch and dinner as well. Which is just as well because it tastes great and is also really healthy. It comprises rice and beans and is usually accompanied by a fried egg at breakfast. Other accompaniments to start the morning include sausage, fried potatoes and some salad.
In Vietnam breakfast usually took a buffet form but often there were chefs on-hand to cook some food to order. We were always offered Pho – a tangle of noodles, freshly cooked and served in a yummy broth, topped with meat and vegetables. You pick up a side plate and add herbs, chilli, limes and other delicious items so that you can create your own personalised taste sensation. The liquid of the broth also ensured that we were thoroughly hydrated for the day ahead.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: with Mexican cuisine more is always more. There are so many dishes on offer, we didn’t have the same breakfast twice throughout our trip. Tacos with all the trimmings were just as fantastic to eat at breakfast as they were at lunch or dinner (or even for a mid-excursion snack). You can never have too many tacos.
Chuilaquiles are basically tortillas (often leftovers) which form a carb base. Then they are covered in red or green salsa and other ingredients such as shredded chicken, cheese or refried beans.
Tortilla with mole (pronounced molay) makes for a sophisticated breakfast. Mole is famous as the savoury sauce which contains chocolate but it’s so much more than chocolate sauce. It’s actually a very complex sauce, which contains a vast number of ingredients and takes a long time to make. Hotels in Mexico will often provide a sweet, glossy mole but the best ones can be found at the local market.
Huevas chiopanecas (below left) are eggs with red sauce and pork tamales (corn dough steamed inside a husk). And huevos coletos (below right) are fried eggs over tortillas with beans and pork sausage, which sounds western enough, until it’s adorned with spicy red sauce.
These dishes are also the sort of food that will be eaten through the day. And quite right too – they are all delicious, so you wouldn’t want to restrict yourself to just the first meal of the day.
Like in Mexico, Korean people eat a wide variety of dishes in the morning and many of these aren’t solely for breakfast. Stew, known as jigae, accompanied by rice and side dishes, known as banchan, are popular.
Kimchi also features, as it does with pretty much every Korean meal. It is a spicy fermented cabbage dish and is so popular that most Korean people have two refrigerators – a normal one and a kimchi one. We make our own – you can find our kimchi recipe here.
World’s Best Breakfasts – Back At Home
And, of course, whenever we are staying away from home in the UK, we’ll always have an honest-to-goodness fry-up. Sausage, bacon, egg (usually fried, poached or scrambled), black pudding, mushroom, tomato, beans and sometime a hash brown are the usual components.
We recently discovered that the best possible place for a full English breakfast that we’ve ever eaten is actually in our home town. While many top breakfast establishments boast locally sourced food (which is, of course, delicious), The Gourmet Food Kitchen in Fargo Village, Coventry go one step further and actually cure their own bacon and make their own sausages and black pudding. And that’s just the start: The hash brown (never the most fabulous component of breakfasts) is a home-made bubble and squeak, a glorious blend of fried potato and cabbage. The beans have never seen a tin – they are home-made baked beans in a rich tomato sauce. Chef Tony even makes his own rich, tangy and utterly delicious brown sauce to accompany the feast.
These are our favourite breakfasts from around the world. Do you have a favourite? Let us know!
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