London's best fry-ups (according to me)
With help from Kelly Pochyba, Tom Usher, Angela Hui and Joe of @eggchipbeanpint
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I started writing about restaurants because I was into things like old chairs and hand-painted signs, so I used to just focus on those. For a while I would try to get around my lack of food knowledge by describing the way dishes taste and how they made me feel, rather than rating them. I’ve rarely called anything the “best,” because I didn’t think I knew enough about any dish to have a right to.
But I realised recently that I do know about fry-ups – if eating something a million times makes you an authority. The funny thing is that I don’t eat them much these days, not because I’ve lost my taste for cooked breakfasts, but because the truly great ones have made the mediocre ones harder to bear.
I’ve also devoted so much energy to egg, bacon, sausage, beans, tomatoes, chips, bubble, black pudding, hash browns, mushrooms, bread, fried bread, toast and tea that my time would probably now be better spent researching other stuff. Most of all though, I don’t have the compulsion to find London’s best fry-up anymore, because I already know the ten that I would happily eat forever.
So this isn’t a list of my favourite caffs, nor is it ranked. It also intentionally excludes some legendary spots – such as Dory’s, Bar Bruno and the River Cafe – because I’d recommend you eat their ham, their liver and their lasagne instead. It isn’t a complete list of the best fry-ups I’ve had in my life either, because it doesn’t include the ones I ate in Swansea and Glasgow. This list is simply the best fry-ups in London according to me.
I’ve stress-tested my opinions by recently eating each of these 10 favourites again, which I’m glad to report are all as good as I remembered. I also asked a few guests to join me for a meal, not just because I like their work and I wanted to hang out with them, but because I trust what they have to say about food. In a departure from my previous caff guides, there’s a couple of contemporary restaurants in this list, because I secretly like fancy breakfasts too.
Beppe’s Café
The parts of pig and cow served at Beppe’s come from a place where whole animals are sold, so I find it easier to imagine them before they were hung, chopped up and thrown on the grill. While researching this piece I ate there with Tom Usher, a journalist, MMA fighter and qualified personal trainer. I wanted to speak to Tom because he’s in good shape, knows about nutrition and regularly enjoys a cooked breakfast. “Monday to Friday I’m really good,” Tom said. “But when it comes to the weekend I do want to have something that makes me feel like I’ve earned it.”
My main question for Tom was whether fry-ups are actually bad for you, and he attributed their unhealthy reputation to grease. “There was a massive demonisation of fat in the 1980s,” he said. “So everyone went on this low-fat diet, which fucked us over in loads of different ways… If you had a relative carbless fry-up – where it’s just like bacon, sausage, egg, tomato, mushroom, black pudding – that’s fine,” Tom told me.
Not only is the meat at Beppe’s of a better quality than at many places that charge more for less, it’s also cooked with more care. Speaking to Tom made me realise that the appeal of any cooked breakfast comes down to a sort of mental nourishment, whether through being a treat, part of a routine or connected with memory. “When I was growing up, my mum used to make me basically a fry-up every fucking morning,” Tom said. “I always associate it with feeling safe.”
23 W Smithfield, London EC1A 9HY