OF SAUSAGES AND WOE

Rick learns that one man’s meat is another man’s burned chipolatas.

I’ve toured a lot over the years and have enjoyed many of the different cuisines that I’ve sampled on my travels. However, there’s one meal I’m particularly fussy about and that’s breakfast. I’ve often wondered why Britain is the only place that really gets it right, and it was only the other day when the penny finally dropped.

On a recent trip to a country that will remain nameless (as I love going there), I toddled off to the hotel’s breakfast room with my stomach rumbling for a full English. Poached eggs, crispy bacon, welldone sausages, grilled mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, wholemeal toast with marmalade, and a large pot of English Breakfast tea on the side. I’m salivating just typing this.

Breakfast was a self-service buffet with the usual row of stainless steel serving dishes, but when I lifted the first lid, I recoiled in horror.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said to a waitress who was hovering around the serving area, “but I think a baby has been sick on this dish…”

“It is scrambled egg, sir,” she replied.

“But it’s green! I don’t suppose you do poached eggs?” I asked optimistically.

“No, sir,” she replied politely.

The second tray housed the even more horrific sight of piles of pink willies.

“They are sausages, sir,” said the waitress before I even had a chance to comment.

The third lid was just as shocking. Beneath it lay what seemed to be sliced jellyfish swimming in tons of grease.

“Bacon,” she added. By then I’d lost my appetite so opted for some rock-hard bread with a pot of lukewarm coffee.

Two weeks later, I was staying in a really nice London hotel. Once again I found myself queuing at the breakfast buffet but this time, there just happened to be a foreign gentlemen in front of me. He lifted the lid on the first dish to reveal a platter of beautifully prepared scrambled egg. He gasped and gestured to the waiter.

“Vot is dis? Is like wallpaper paste!” he exclaimed.

“It’s scrambled eggs, sir,” replied the waiter.

“But it is not green!”

He moved to the next tray to reveal some perfectly cooked pork sausages. He tutted loudly and remarked, “But zeese are cremated and not eatable! Zey should be pink and raw! Don’t you British know how to cook?”

The next dish housed some deliciously crispy bacon, but it was all too much for the guest. He threw his hands in the air, picked up a couple of slices of toast and asked where the salami was.

“We have marmalade, sir,” the waiter replied, gesturing to a neat pyramid of tiny jars.

As the guest huffed and puffed back to his table with his plate of freshly-toasted bread, the waiter just looked at me and asked, “Why is it that people always want what they get in their own countries?”

I loaded up my plate and replied, “How right you are!”

“But zeese are cremated! Zey should be pink

and raw!”