Breakfast Epiphanies

Moonlight Cafe, N19

As the rain tumbles down upon the roads of Tufnell Park on this July morning, Eggsley and Lurvensteen venture out to Moonlight Cafe, perhaps the best cafe on Brecknock Road (suggestions welcome).

The decor is welcomingly uninspiring, with a wall-mounted television quietly mumbling nonsense in the background, adding some texture to the repugnant sound of feeding human beings. The owners are polite and very speedy, with a warm, welcoming smile that your humble misanthrope looks forward to before gorging on greasy, belly-busting, heart attack-inducing grub.

The Full English (pictured) costs £5 (or was it £6?) and comes with a choice of Tea or Coffee. Tea or Coffee included in the price is an absolute must, and any caff that does not offer this is a heretic; a blemish upon our beautiful city’s greasy spoon underbelly (once again, more on this to follow when yours truly finally gets round to writing his own Breakfast Lore).

The size of the breakfast is staggering. Upon its arrival my stomach wept with both joy and fear at the prospect of tackling this beast. Coming here hungover is absolutely incredible. Sober, however, it is a little terrifying.

The beans are your standard affair whilst the bacon itself is very salty, but well-cooked and without that disgusting white phlegm that it just can’t help but excitedly excrete upon meeting an oily frying pan. Mixing the beans with the bacon or adding some brown sauce is an absolute must, or you will (as your Eggsley did) find yourself rapidly asking for pints of water to avoid salt-death.

The egg is nothing too special - it is fried without love, lacking definition, shape or flavour (of course, the secret to a tasty egg is to fry it in the bacon grease). Pro tip: add some pepper.

The sausage (80% breadcrumbs, mind - is that really a sausage?), whilst looking absolutely repulsive, has been well cooked (deep fried?) and is absolutely splendid when dipped in brown sauce, dunked in egg yolk or saturated with beans.

“God this weather’s minging.”
“Yeah.”
“I am not gonna leave the flat today…I’m going to sit indoors, play FIFA and drink tea.” 

Whilst hash browns are always preferred, chips with a Full English can be good when cooked well (i.e. not McCain oven chips), and balanced (quantity-wise) in a decent ratio between other items. This is not the case here. My breakfast is struggling to fend off a pointy, potato-based invasion. They overwhelm, and are left largely unfinished.

The true pièce de résistance however (and, also, the murderous heavyweight of this fine establishment’s breakfast offering) is the delightfully-named “Fried Slice”. A staggering feat of achievement, this seemingly-harmless object managed to completely destroy any desire to eat for the rest of the day and made my body fear for its life. The decision to include tomatoes in the breakfast at this point has to be highly-praised, as their welcoming acidity provided the only escape from Slicey’s mouth-ruining grease (having to run for a bus afterwards did not help matters, and almost resulted in Moonlight’s offering reappearing all over the windows of the 134).

“God that new Cher Lloyd song is fucking awful.”

Yes. It really is. It really, really is.