Expectations of an 'English breakfast' abroad

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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

Just after finishing my A levels, I arrived in Lyon as an au pair. The first dinner with my hosts: andouillette. I rather liked them, and only discovered later what I had eaten.

Presumably they called it an Irish breakfast though, didn’t they? So it should have included black AND white pudding, as well as the bacon, eggs, sausages etc.

BTW in case anyone thinks it’s just Brits, at a seaside resort in Italy I’ve seen signs (in German) saying ‘Potatoes just like Mum makes!’

And a dd once shared a house in Cambodia with 6 Italians, NONE of whom would ever even try any of the local cuisine. All they would eat was pasta, pizza, etc.

To be fair to hubster, I'd expect better than a frankfurter in France.

And soda bread. And a potato scone.

it's France, they were probably teaching le Ross Biff a lesson with a bit of chef's special sauce.

Maybe if he is so particular about his English breakfasts, he should stay in England and not go abroad where food is inevitably going to not be English . . .

Who on earth goes to France and orders a full English?

Hubbie. Never met the man.

Same reason you might order a croissant in England.
Because he fancies it.

I am quite restricted in the foods I can eat, should I not be allowed to travel abroad? Do you think travelling is solely about food?

He really expected a ‘proper English breakfast’ in france? With English sausages?

Come on….
Has it crossed his and yours mind you can’t find English sausages in france?

And yet I’m sure he'd think nothing about modifying a French recipe to the ingredients you find here. Never mind it’s not quite the real thing right?

Why would anyone order a full English breakfast in France (or anywhere else that wasn't England)?

Shouldn't have voted leave.

Ignorance is the joy of the many, the privilege of the few.

You can travel abroad as much or as little as you like - what you can't do is expect to get the same food as you get at home.

All these well travelled people thinking the French always eat Croissants for breakfast 🤦.

I wouldn't, no. You can't even buy the same in France I don't think. There was a programme on Channel 4 recently where they competed to win a bed and breakfast in France and the couples who wanted to do a Full English couldn't get the bacon or sausages.

Surely part of the joy of being in France is the breakfast? Fresh croissants and baguettes, loads of fruit. Gorgeous.

The French have perfectly nice sausages (we had amazing Toulouse sausage with ratatouille for dinner in - unsurprisingly - Toulouse) But the French aren't really big on breakfast. Mostly it will be coffee and a pastry or maybe a piece of bread with some jam. There is a bit element of truth in the joke about a French breakfast being black coffee and a cigarette.

Some places in the bigger, more cosmopolitan cities seem to have places that bigger brunch type breakfasts but that seems to be mainly things like eggs and avocado on toast.

Are you really suggesting that if you'd been born in France that you'd be dead because there would be nothing you could eat available anywhere in the country?

the only time I have had english breakfast abroad is

• when I went to tenerife when i was 14 and my step dad was the sort to want an english breakfast on holiday
• when i was backpacking in thailand for 6 months and craved some english stodge once or twice and happened to be staying near an 'english bar' again we had met up with FIL who has an apartment there so he took us!

So basically I think it is men of a certain age that want an english breakfast abroad!!!

Well they don't eat a full English that's for sure. Are all the boulangeries just for tourists then?

I've stayed in very non touristy France and people - French people- queue up for croissants and baguettes in the morning.

Blimey, there's a lot of snobbery on this thread, isn't there? I understand that most of us would want to order local food, but I can also understand that if somebody saw an 'English breakfast' on the menu, they'd expect it to be similar to one that would be cooked in this country, otherwise you'd just expect it to labelled as just a cooked breakfast, surely?
Most people seeing an English breakfast on the menu would probably have expectations of a pork sausage (possibly Cumberland or Lincolnshire), bacon, fried eggs etc.
I also get that somebody just might fancy that instead of food from the country they're staying in - some people just love a good old fashioned English breakfast! Personally, I would have been interested in ordering it, just to see what the French version of an English breakfast actually was!

No - or those (can't think of the name) but they are cooked chick about to emerge from the shell.

When you go abroad you eat their food as part of the experience. Travel broadens the mind.

In the South especially there seems to be what Mr Monkey and I call "breakfast wine" - a small 125ml glass of white wine at about 9am.

If I am in a hotel with a breakfast buffest I enjoy seeing what they serve in terms of cooked breakfast for the Northern European/English guests. The most fun one was the hotel in Leuven, Belgium that served some sort of casserole of sausages fried with onions, peppers and potatoes - of the kind you would get for dinner in the UK.

Still ate some though!

But how were the baked beans?