'Breakfast at the Wolseley'

What have writers said about breakfast?

“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”—Francis Bacon

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed six impossible things before breakfast.”—Lewis Carroll

And from the author A. A. Gill, who fulfills Bacon’s belief in “hope”:

“Breakfast is everything. The beginning, the first thing. It is the mouthful that is the commitment to a new day, a continuing life.”

Perhaps A. A. Gill's words will still be quoted 500 years from now as Francis Bacon's are quoted from the 16th century.

Breakfast is special. It is the meal that starts the day. The meal that can be our one lagoon of tranquil waters before we venture out into the wider ocean called life whose sole purpose is to erode our energies. It sets us up with the calories, carbohydrates and proteins that we need in order to be hunter gatherers and return home having survived the day.

At home when we have breakfast, we have an intimate relationship with it. We know exactly how it is prepared, who prepared it and what it will be like. There is a regularity and a pattern to this that are ingrained in our daily routines to the point of being a habit and taken for granted.

Breakfast away from home in a hotel or restaurant is different. We lose that intimacy and are even less inclined to consider all the preparation and processes that conjoin to get the meal to our table.

In Breakfast At The Wolseley, A. A. Gill takes the reader through the entire process. From when the restaurant and kitchens are cleaned just after the last diner from dinner service leaves the restaurant through to when the last breakfast customer leaves after ten the next morning.

“No business before breakfast”—William Makepiece Thackeray

Thackeray was referring to “business” only, and not to the amount of work involved to get that first meal of the day from kitchen to table.

The author sheds light on the unseen army of cleaners, pastry chefs, bakers of bread, and the chefs on standby to fulfill individual orders as they start coming in at seven in the morning, all of them from as diverse and international backgrounds as the menu choices. The visible army at the front of house have been hard at work since long before seven, putting clean linen on the tables, laying out place settings, ensuring cruets are full and there are no wobbly tables. Even minutes before service commences, off the table preparations continue. The front of house staff are briefed on whom they will be looking after that day, what their habitual requirements are and what to say to them about any special news in their family; birthdays, engagement, marriages and births all warrant special cards from the entire team to the guest.

A. A. Gill makes it sound like a theatrical production, with the way the stage and scenery has been set in anticipation of the leading actors: the customers to arrive. This is what any eatery should aspire to, be it a small café on a street corner or a place such as The Wolseley in London’s Piccadilly. A place where magic happens and takes us away from the outside world.

As well as setting the scene, the author walks the reader through some of the breakfast menu items, their history, and their recipes, from making croissants to the ultimate in breakfast decadence and luxury, a chocolate fondant. In that range is, as expected for an English establishment, is the “English Breakfast,” packing enough calories to fuel a Royal Marine on exercise, and my favourite, “Eggs Benedict”.

There is a legend about how this dish was created. It doesn’t involve a holy order. It does involve The Waldorf Hotel in New York, a real chef, and a character from either a Damon Runyon or P. G. Wodehouse story. Myth or legend or truth? That final decision is highly personal.

Other stories and anecdotes about the menu items pepper the pages of this book and provide platefuls of chat lines breakfast diners can use to fill silences or, if vanity takes over, to impress.

This book is an easy read for anyone interested in food, especially breakfast, and wants to get a flavour of what preparing breakfast in a hotel involves. It is packed with recipes, is well indexed for easy reference and is packed with seductive pictures of various menu items.

“If you look on ham and eggs and lust; you have already committed breakfast in your heart.”—C.S Lewis

Breakfast At The Wolseley by A. A. Gill, published by Quadrille, London ISBN 978 1 84400 444 7 £12.99