Expectations of an 'English breakfast' abroad

[mysparkleismissing]

Hubbie had an English breakfast in France yesterday and was grumpy that the sausages and bacon weren't what you'd get at home

Would you expect what you'd get at home?

Or allow poetic licence given the frankfurter type sausages are what they see as a sausage

Why not have the breakfast of the country you’re in?

It was in response to this

They should not be advertising it as an English breakfast then
False advertising 😂

Ugh 🙄

Fair point! They should advertise petit déjeuner à l'anglais, like we have 'continental' breakfast and French toast 😂

In any country other than the UK, I would expect that if it contains an egg and some bacon then it's basically "english style" no matter what else they may or may not include or whether the cooking style is similar to what it is at home. But what a weird thing to do to order an "english style" breakfast when abroad, unless as a one-off to see what it is like and be interested in the differences. When in France, I breakfast like the French. When in Germany, I breakfast like the Germans. I did have a little trouble in Italy as my research showed that really the typical Italian breakfast is a cigarette and a black coffee, but found some breakfasty sort of pastries anyway

In my experience Italians love a bit of breakfast cake.

Would you want to eat a full cooked breakfast every day if you were spending a fortnight in England?

I've had some truly mediocre fry-ups in England.

There’s more to English breakfast than a “full English”.

But if a full English was important to me I’d go to Torquay not Nice.

I love a croissant, but sometimes I really don't want sweet stuff for breakfast.

Offerings in other countries can vary compared with what we get here. AFAIK there is no worldwide standard for "English Breakfast". Maybe something that the French would in no way consider ordering or eating would qualify ?

I remember asking for scrambled egg on toast in China. There often "toast" is a piece of bread that has been waved over a flame for 2 seconds, rather than an actual piece of bread that has been browned through burning.

In fact one of the funniest things about travelling to weird places was always what offerings we were served up with and comparing them to what was "standard british" and mildly taking the piss (with each other of course not the locals who were doing their best/prepping things according to local customs).

I think the important thing is to have low expectations, understand that what you order isn't going to necessarily correspond to what you get at home, and that our efforts to replicate their food are probably just as bad, if not worse. I've had whole groups of guests from foreign countries refuse to eat our UK efforts at their food because it was so bad. UK-Chinese food for example is not much like Chinese-Chinese food.

👏👏

Have to say I’ve eaten a ‘full Irish’ and even a ‘full Ulster’ breakfast before now which were lovely and included both black and white puddings. And fried potatoes…

I wouldn't order a full English breakfast overseas.
But people saying basically 'have some pastries instead' – that doesn't work for me either. There's not enough ballast/nutrition in pastries. They're nice as 'pudding' but I need some fat and protein first.
I've had riad breakfasts in Morocco where I've desperately eaten huge chunks of butter in an attempt to get some protein or fat; IME the breakfasts there are about five different kinds of bread/doughnut type things and some jam!

In French an ‘English departure’ is when you leave a party without saying goodbye to anyone. And ‘the English illness/affliction’ is to be fond of masochism

Depends where you go - Chinatown in most cities is pretty close. GERMAN Chinese food bears no real resemblance to Chinese at all - too much MSG, and what they do cook inevitably has a strong Vietnamese influence. Like and Indian food from Bangladesh.

I knew “filer à l’anglaise”, but thought "la maladie anglaise" was syphilis

Yes, but that just shows who the French truly are, not a reflection of anything real about the English.

To be fair, "to take French leave" is the same as "filer à l’anglaise". Just like “the French disease” is syphilis. So there’s that.

S&M = “Le vice anglais”

You see the same pattern in English with “Dutch courage”, “going Dutch” “double Dutch” which date back to the wars with the Dutch in 17th & 18th c.

' to take French leave' as the English say, when you leave without saying goodbye.

I thought it was whipping

In German too. English sex is S&M. French sex means oral.