Long Live the Greasy Spoon

It was with sadness I read the headline that a lot of Greasy Spoons have gone to the wall, and those who have managed to stay afloat have changed to being cafes or brasseries
(source)

A fry up breakfast is tradition in my book. Hubby and I call it a celestial fix rather than a cholesterol fix because fried anything is so rare for us. But for me, once in a while can’t hurt so long as you are sensible. The above is one of mine, bacon, egg, tomatoes, and toast so suitable for a SW brekkie, though I love fried bread, black pudding, sausage, mushrooms and even a hash brown if there’s one going!

I dry fry, that is use a non stick pan and no oil. If I was cooking chicken or chops, I used to do these in a frying pan of water, as the meat kept its flavour, stayed moist and you had the juices to make some decent gravy should you want it.
When we were on the road, a good breakfast was paramount to start the day, and fry up had everything. Hubby is King of the fry up using one camping burner, serving everything hot, including a mug of tea. I can’t match that.
If we were in B&B, we had the full breakfast as it was likely to be our only meal of the day other than a sandwich we picked up on the way to wherever we were next looking at a house.

For us, a Greasy Spoon always meant value for money, as everything was freshly cooked, hot and plenty of it, including a huge mug of tea. We found a fantastic one in one of the Weymouth side streets, but MIL wouldn’t put her foot across the threshold so our all day brekkie for a fiver plans were scuppered.
We have only once ever had a breakfast presented swimming in grease and that was in a rather well to do establishment where breakfasts started at £6, with toast and tea extra. We had the toast and tea, dabbed off the fat on the bacon and sausage, and left the rest.

Health-wise, frying anything in lashings of fat isn’t a good thing, but to me that shouldn’t mean the traditional English cooked breakfast needs to bite the dust.
Many large catering kitchens have huge griddles or grills for bacon and sausages, and eggs are done on hotplates with a smidgen of oil brushed across the top first. Chips are always done in deep fat fryers, but chips IMO shouldn’t be included in a breakfast fry up anyway!

Is this the end of another of our traditions? I certainly hope not as we are already losing so many to keep the PC brigade happy.  Fast food establishments can cater for most, but a good Greasy Spoon was always worth its weight in gold.

 

 

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