Two strips of bacon, four triangles of butter-soaked toast, two eggs over easy, a tomato slice as garnish, and a bottle of ketchup. Are you smiling yet?
Back in university, that was what we called “The ABB Big Breakfast”. You see, in the basement of the ABB Building was a hidden little cafeteria. It was replete with cozy little booths luxuriously upholstered in periwinkle vinyl and plastic wood. It also served the best breakfast on campus.
It didn’t matter that another cafeteria up north also advertised a “big breakfast”. It just wasn’t the same. At the ABB, with a wink and a smile, you could even get your eggs sunny-side up.
Alas, the ABB Big Breakfast is no more. In my final year, the cafeteria was demolished and replaced with an exam writing centre. Its replacement opened in a brand new building across the street, with an anonymous Pizza Pizza franchise and cramped McDonald’s-style formica stools welded to formica tables. The ABB Big Breakfast is now lost for all time.
So when The Guardian waxed poetic on all-day breakfasts, I was smiling from ear to ear:
“To fully appreciate an all-day breakfast, it should be eaten after midday, hideously hungover, when the sober-minded are choosing between some disgusting wrap or trays of lurid raw fish.”