Browns

http://www.browns-restaurants.co.uk/locations/cambridge/

A more upmarket breakfast this time, which comes at a high price tag, £9 for a full English including 2 bacon, black pudding, 2 sausages, 2 eggs, mushroom and tomato, with toast. You are getting a large breakfast for the money.

Brown by name, brown by door

Troby
Sat out on the patio at the front, we were blessed with the company of "Pastries" today, who is known to cause 'order confusion', and predictably, it happened. To me. The charming waitress came for our orders, and didn't hear my mumbling of "full English", asking Pastries first, who went for that option, but needed to swap off his black pudding for another ingredient. When she asked him how he'd like his eggs, there was a 7 second pause before he decided on poached. Wanting to appear more decisive, I said for 'scrambled eggs please' (assuming that she was asking how I'd like my eggs done with the full English) , with Sefud going for the standard full english with fried egg. Imagine my disapointment when the orders came, and I got just scrambled egg on toast! It did look very good though. Anyway the problem was rapidly rectified by my friends offering parts of their breakfast until I had a plate that was probably more comprehensive than theirs!

Scrambled egg with donated extras

The food was very good - savoury, well cooked sausage, fluffy scrambled egg, tasty mushroom and tomato. The bacon was really playing second fiddle to all this lot, and was a bit thin, but decent enough. Apart from the excellent egg, the highlight was the toast! - seeded, and crumbly, it was toast perfection. The coffee was fine, my double expresso with water on the side got cold a bit quickly.
The best thing about this breakfast was my friends rallying 'round to give me extras, but the breakfast itself was high ranking.

• Food     4
• Value    3.5
• Service  4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   3.5 

Seefud
It was a nice place to sit and check the stock prices in the business section of the paper on a sunny morning. The waitress was nice but whilst Troby didn't order clearly a really good waitress ought to be able to perceive confusion, and it could have easily been rectified with a standard repeating of the order back to us at the end. The food was pretty great though including some nicely cooked black pudding, and despite donating bits to Troby it was still a good plateful. That still doesn't make it great value at £9 though but that's the price you pay for enjoying breakfast without too many lefties.

A Full English half eaten or donated

• Food     4.5
• Value    3
• Service  3.5
• Ambience 4.5
• Coffee   3.5 

Pastries
My main fear about this place was that it'd take a while for the breakfast to arrive, which was the case, but probably only cos they were cooking it. Most of the food was griddled including the toast, which gave it a Turkish kebab feel (good). House newspapers were available: Telegraph, Mail, or for the left-wingers, The Times. Great service - even the best waitresses are susceptible to my force-field of confusion. The breakfast would've looked much better on normal plates rather than the enormous square things we got. Coffee was nice but small, I polished off two before the food arrived.

Overall pretty good and as you would expect: that is, a bit pricey and budget a bit of time for it too.

• Food 4
• Value 3.5
• Service 4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee 3.5

La Hogue Farm Shop, Chippenham

http://www.lahogue.co.uk/

Is this in Cambridge? No! But, is it a pleasant, appetite-sharpening bike ride away? Yes!

Another terrible photo. It is slightly nicer than I've made it look

It's immediately noticeable that the cafe at La Hogue is popular with cyclists, bikers, and the usual garden centre types. Breakfast is ordered at the till then they bring it over.

La Hogue breakfast with extra hash browns

An unorthodox yet wise choice

It looked unimpressive when served, but on closer eating the constituent parts of the breakfast were pretty good. Excellent sausage and noticeably good bacon, though not crispy, and perhaps slightly smoky for the morning. The egg had a nice greasy (but not too greasy) feel that made me wish they had served it with fried bread, tomato and mushrooms. Toast was OK. I don't like getting the little butter portions on the plate but I'll give them a pass for that. Coffee was OK. £6.99 is not unreasonable but obviously you'd be happier with the coffee or tea chucked in, as well as the aforementioned mushrooms and tomato.

The cream tea was reportedly excellent - this from a Girton baker of some repute - crumbly scone, generous portions of clotted cream and jam, good tea. It's unusual to be offered a choice of leaf or bag tea as a matter of course, even more so in unfussy surroundings. All good here then.

Once again I was taunted by a fine selection of cakes which I had no means of carrying. Time to convert the spare bottle holder on the bike for pastries.

• Food 4
• Value 3
• Service 3
• Ambience 3.5
• Coffee 3
• Tea 4.5
• Scone 5

       

One of Seefud's own...

Cooked on a wood burning stove in two pans

Eggs went in the bacon pan once that was cooked

Bacon "resting" over the sausages with the veg

The finished plate

Seefud
The accidental secret here was the very low heat as I was too impatient to let the wood burning stove get up to full heat. The sausages (latteral slashes) really benefited as did the eggs, much to my surprise. The eggs had been laid within 12 hours and were the best fried hen's eggs I've ever had. I think I will be cooking eggs low and slow from now on. Good quality Southwold bacon too. Overall, I was a very happy cook and customer!

• Food     6
• Service  1

Agora at The Copper Kettle

http://thecopperkettle.weebly.com/
Another vintage Cambridge café with stunning views onto Kings College. But does the breakfast do it justice?

A pretty unique view from a window seat

Their version of a Full English

Seefud

The short answer is no, it doesn't. It's not a terrible breakfast by any means, but a location like this demands a higher quality breakfast, and a business this well established ought to be able to deliver. First though, the good parts. Service was professional if a little dour (is everyone a bit grumpy in Cambridge at 9am?). We were met promptly at the door and shown to a great table in the window. Our order was taken after just enough time to review the menu, which had nothing fancy on, but a few different options from the basic components. They were sufficiently well staffed that the coffee (strong but not that tasty) arrived promptly, and the breakfast followed soon after. Clearly the majority was precooked, but the toast and eggs were fresh. The tomato was probably the best thing on the plate for me, cooked to perfection.

Now for the not so good. No mushrooms! I didn't think it made much difference how you cooked a bottom-tier economy sausage, but it turns out you can overcook them. It was a good job the beans were in a dish as they were pretty soupy. But worse, the dish was right in the middle of the plate and pretty hot, so not a satisfying plate arrangement to tackle until it had cooled down enough to be handled. A similarly bottom-tier hash brown and a rasher of bacon (just one) were mediocre at best.

The ambience was pleasant and they seem to attract a fairly high quality clientele, but maybe it was a little too quiet for free conversation. Overall, could have been really nice, but was just a little disappointing. It wasn't expensive at ~£8 for breakfast and coffee, but still not brilliant value, even in such a good location.

• Food     2.5
• Value    3
• Service  4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   3

A double shot Americano, both Troby and Seefud's standard coffee order

Troby
We were greeted by a bow tied efficient waiter, maybe all a bit over the top, but this is going to be one of the most popular Cambridge cafes, overlooking King's and all. I was impressed with the speed of service, but the whole plate was let down by two things. 1) the sausage, and 2) the shallow dish of bean soup. Now, I've been hoisted by my petard somewhat, as I'm fussy about bean contamination, but this rather large bowl in the middle of the plate reduced the angles of attack severely. The sausage was one of the worst yet in the breakfast quest. Not as scary as some, but the most tasteless.

The snag in question

The eggs were very good, and it's nice to have two. The tomato was also well cooked. Bacon was fine, but it didn't do enough to make up for the poor beans and sausage. The hash brown was forgettable. I wasn't offered the option of brown or white toast, but brown may have made this better. Coffee was fine but average. So, overall an agreeable enough place, kind of what you expect. The food was food, but not great food.

• Food      2.5  
• Value     3.5
• Service   4
• Ambience  4
• Coffee    3

Don Pasquale

http://donpasquale.co.uk/ [great website, love the game of 'Spot The Difference' on the front page]
A popular tourist spot in the middle of Cambridge, next to the market. A family run Italian restaurant that also serves a full English.

Pretty views from Don Pasquale

Full English

Troby
I wasn't sure what to expect here, but was very pleasantly surprised. Service was quick and efficient, and my double expresso with extra water was decent enough. Beans come as an 'add on' here, and I ordered the breakfast without beans having recently suffered heavy bean contamination. The food that arrived was great - crispy bacon, good sausage, the mushrooms were well cooked, and the centrepeice was large grilled tomato. This provided any juice that one may have missed without the beans, and in my book, a good tomato beats beans any day. This was a good breakfast, and even felt quite healthy with such a big tomato as a main ingredient. Pretty good value for just over £6 too.

• Food     4
• Value    4
• Service  4
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   3.5

A sprig of green adds to the presentation

Speaks a thousand words

Seefud

Having just sat out on the pavement in front of Don Pasquale’s for breakfast, I’m now firmly a supporter of Troby’s campaign for Cambridge to restrict lorries in the centre to night time deliveries, like they do in some cities in Europe. What would otherwise have been a pleasant al-fresco breakie was slightly marred by the diesel fumes and noise. Obviously we were on the noisy side of the terrace but there’s no natural sunlight there at that time in the morning and you get a bit of warmth and light reflected off the white buildings of Market Street. Anyway, onto the breakfast…

Not that they’re the same type of outfit at all, but after Carluccio’s and the crispy pancetta, it was in the back of my mind that Don Pasquale’s might feasibly go for some element of English-Italian fusion. Fortunately they don’t, the Full English is as English as you like. More English in fact than lots of other places I could mention that insist on serving hash browns. It started well before we’d even got our food, with beans being an option on the menu. I don’t mind beans, but they’re not an essential part of a Full English for me. Far better to forego the beans than mushrooms or tomato. And this place got the tomato pretty much spot on. Nice and big, hot all the way through but not over cooked and mushy; once cut up a bit and re-seasoned it was a highlight of the plate. And the shrooms were okay too, very small button mushrooms cooked just enough. The right amount of fresh toast was English white sliced for-the-win, not ciabatta or anything fancy. The bacon was decent English back bacon too, and cooked pretty well. The egg could have been a bit runnier, and I’m not sure how I feel about the sprinkling of dill but the sausage was a bit of a revelation. A decent quality sausage (English, yes) with three or four transverse slashes (probably applied mid-fry) increased the crispy edge to volume ratio in a very pleasing fashion.

Overall a quality plate of food and a nice enough cup of Americano, for around £8. Service was prompt and professional (no danger of food turning up before cutlery here, one of my personal bugbears). Not exactly over welcoming but I'd rather they were proficient and a bit brusque than obsequious and inept. No black pudding but I didn’t miss it today. Even though the food inevitably went cold (the plates could have been hotter for the terrace) I was still enjoying it to the last mouthful. I’ll be happy to go back there, but I might see if breakfast can be eaten in the upstairs dining room.

• Food     4.5
• Value    4
• Service  4
• Ambience 3.5
• Coffee   3.5

Pastries
This was actually my second breakfast of the day so comprised espresso + danish only. Which I have neglected to photograph. Espresso was good. Danish was warm and generous - though of the floppy rather than crispy variety. The location is good when it's not fearsomely busy, though it's a shame it doesn't catch the sun in the morning. The right sort of service - friendly but unfussy.

• Pastry   4
• Value    3.5
• Service  5
• Ambience 4
• Coffee   4