A literary celebration of the Full English

You wouldn’t expect to find much literature on breakfasts but there are one or two extracts from ‘King of the City’, the book that told us what happened to the Oak.

“Whereas I was inclined to indulge myself with a Full English occasionally, Fromental could eat a Full International”

“It was, of course, mostly a poultry and game bird restaurant, but it also did, at that time of the morning, the best Full English I’d had in a million years. Eggs straight from the chicken. Bacon sliced from the pig. Black pudding that wasn’t dead yet. All singing in its own delicious grease. Even the fried bread had a slightly feral quality, as if it could slip away from you at any second. Portobello mushrooms that seemed to have been torn from the secret vaults below us. Tomatoes that seconds before could have been bouncing on the vine. The toast was Polish rye with Jamaican Walkers Wood cane sugar marmalade. First Press Assam in the pot. What is it about some markets that they demand such high quality grub? Others seem to sell nothing but weak tea, Wonderbread sandwiches. Microwaved back bacon.”

“I reached for the Daddy’s. I’d arrived at the third stage of the taste experience. There’s a ritual to eating a Full English as complex as a Japanese tea ceremony, but unlike the tea ceremony those who practise it never offer a public glimpse. You wouldn’t know what I was doing, unless you knew what I was doing. I got myself some fresh Assam from the big samovars they had on the counter.”