We continue our breakfast of champions. This crisp April morning, we’re dining by the waterfront, closer to our hotel rather than trek uphill like yesterday. Whatever a super berry leather is, it’s not worth another climb not when we can just stroll out to the lake.
Again, the ventilation is bad at the café. It’s pretty much the case wherever we journey for brunch, be it Bangkok or Buenos Aires. We are used to being welcomed by the aroma of other people’s breakfast stir-fries. We know instantly, with a single whiff, whether to order the blood sausages or the slow roasted pork belly.
This café, just like the one yesterday, isn’t really designed for carnivores though. Some scrambled eggs, a pork and sage sausage or two, that’s about it. Their menu attracts vegans and vegetarians like flies to organically farmed honey.
When in Rome and so forth. I order the apple, green tea and berry bircher muesli. Full of oats, kombucha, coconut yoghurt (dairy-free to make this vegan friendly, naturally), blackcurrant compote, maple and seed hokey pokey (which is Kiwi for honeycomb toffee, apparently) and the freshest strawberries.
You, being a fan of all things brioche and eggs, order the raspberry cheesecake French toast, of course. Paired with half a poached pear, raspberry chia jam, lemon mascarpone, discs of fresh kiwi fruit and mandarin, and some pretty albeit unnecessary white chocolate gingernut bark, it’s an Instagram masterpiece.
Fortunately they taste good too. Tasty enough we forget we prefer being carnivores.
Maybe it’s the view: we see folks walking past, the gulls, the waterfront. Maybe it’s the fact there are fewer tourists than usual given the worsening pandemic around the world. There is no noise, or less of the undesirable sort.
Maybe it’s the company, just chatting with you instead of the both of us bent over our phones. We are tired of reading all the bad news; it’s only bad news now, I’m afraid. In a time when everyone is growing more distant, even before all the social distancing, we feel closer than ever. In this together, as ever. As always.