English breakfast udon

A little breakfast, as a treat

At the risk of alienating a large proportion of my readership, I have a confession to make: I don’t really eat breakfast.

I haven’t for about as long as I can remember. As a teenager, I skipped my cereal to get a few extra minutes in bed, trusting I could make it to mid-morning before the hunger really kicked in. At uni and beyond, I found I just didn’t have the appetite that early in the morning unless a hangover landed in that sweet spot where I got drunk enough to be ravenous, but not so much as to find my stomach turning.

I love breakfast food, don’t get me wrong. The fry-up is one of Britain’s great cultural achievements, my passion for pastry I’ve already made clear, and I’m not sure any taco has quite the visceral appeal of the breakfast taco. But all of these foods serve just as well after 11am, and indeed, breakfast for dinner is an underrated enjoyment.

Still, when I discovered intermittent fasting a few years ago, breakfast was part of the appeal — or rather the lack thereof. I was fasting for 12 or 14 hours a day without even really meaning to, and so the idea of pushing lunch back a couple extra hours to hit an even 16 hardly felt arduous. And you’re telling me that’s all I had to do to lose weight!? (Well, no, but that’s its own issue).

The result is that I now eat breakfast extremely infrequently. The odd Sunday brunch, sure, and occasionally for those aforementioned Goldilocks hangovers. But other than that, I’ve successfully transformed breakfast from daily staple to special treat. 

This was a good trick, because I’m as guilty as anyone of falling into the Reductress treat trap. That’s a problem when ‘treat’ means half a tub of ice cream, but a little more manageable when you’re able to spoil yourself with a bowl of Corn Flakes.

Days off work are usually a safe bet for a luxurious early meal. My default position here is a good loaf of soft, white bread, butcher’s back bacon, and cheap supermarket eggs (come on, I’m not made of money) to make a messy bacon and egg sandwich. I say messy, and I do mean it. I fry my eggs soft and sunny side up, and in moments of mad excess often opt for two. Softie southerner that I am, this is accompanied by lashings of ketchup, to the point that the sandwich bleeds red and yellow when I cut it in half, the plate slick with sauce. It should be impossible to eat without the bottom of the bread running soggy with yolk, breaking my usual rules of sandwich construction and common decency, but it’s really the only way a bacon sandwich feels right any more.

Holidays are another prime opportunity for breakfasting. This is partly because there is no other time when it’s acceptable to make every day a treat, and partly because when my travel is now typically so food-focussed that it would be folly to turn down any chance to try another spot. 

In most of Europe this means endless mornings of coffee and croissants, in America unwise quantities of pancakes and diner food, and in Asia I do my best to figure out what the locals consider breakfast and try to make sense of it later. In last year’s trip to China breakfast ranged from freshly steamed bao to heaving bowls of chilli-red offal soup, but the perk of lacking a breakfast routine is that it’s hard to get too bothered by food that doesn’t fit into it.

Breakfast has been on my mind today in particular because of an impromptu treat — a reward not for a day off, nor a holiday, but to make up for the arduous burden of being in Soho at 8:30am for work.

My mind being what it is, while drifting off to sleep last night it turned idly to cafes nearby where I might while away the morning working, or lunch spots I hadn’t yet tried, when I was struck by a sudden, singular vision: a bowl of Koya’s breakfast udon in broth.

I’ve long loved Koya, from late night drop-ins at the Soho original to quick lunches at the more casual Broadway Market outpost, but the breakfast menu has always eluded me, for by now obvious reasons. Here, though, was my chance: solo in Soho, with time to kill and the desire to make up for a very-slightly-earlier-than-normal alarm. 

It was unlikely that I was ever going to order anything other than the infamous English Breakfast Udon, which sees the thick, bouncy noodles bob in a light miso broth accompanied by strips of thick pork belly bacon, a gently fried egg, and two plump shiitake mushrooms.

Traditional this is not, for either the English or the Japanese, but the appeal is pretty obvious. The virtue and lightness of Koya’s ascetic soup noodles are counter-balanced by the satisfying heft of bacon and eggs. This is a bowl that skips from the light and nourishing to the comforting and filling, at once wholesome and indulgent. 

Served with a homemade cup of warm ginger tea, this was the ideal antidote to London’s on-again-off-again hail storms and rain showers, and a welcome reminder that not every treat needs the air of excess about it. Not that I could support a Koya-a-day breakfast habit, financially or nutritionally, but there are certainly faster ways to kill myself.

Thoroughly sated, I wandered off to enjoy the rest of my rare three-meal day, but I can’t lie: a part of me is looking forward to another long break before lunch tomorrow, some extended digestion and the chance to actually build an appetite back up. And by the next time breakfast rolls around, it’ll feel a little bit like a treat all over again.