So, with my lovely girlfriend having deserted me for the ski-slopes of France, I was left to my own devices this weekend. Dangerous. I ended up showing a friend from Chile around some of London’s better cocktail bars. That’s an adventure that deserves a post all to itself. But we can safely skip these details and move to the logical conclusion of the evening – namely a stinking hangover the next morning.
So far as I am concerned it is a medical fact that fried breakfasts are the single greatest method of recovering from a hangover. Water, vitamins – yes, yes all very valid. But a bit of grease sorts the belly quick as a flash and it was so we headed for the Wet Fish Cafe in West Hampstead. Living just above West End Lane presents you with an awesome selection of breakfast places – a resource that I criminally under-use.
http://www.thewetfishcafe.co.uk/london/restaurant/index.php
Anyhow, I’d eaten dinner here once before and whilst perfectly pleasant, I wasn’t overwhelmed. But something suggested that breakfast would be better. So guts-a-rotting I ordered a bubble and squeak with sausage, pancetta, eggs and Hollandaise. A bit of a curious assembly. And maybe cheeky at around £9.50, or am I being unfair?
Good bubble and squeak, crispy fried exterior, pleasingly stodgy interior. Sausage… well it looked great but lacked a bit of oomph. Just not as meaty and spiced and I’d have liked. Eggs – great. Runny and gooey with the sauce enjoyable in terms of both texture and taste. Pancetta – was exactly that. Crisp fried with layers of fat that made it tasty, the smokiness offering a challenge to the the spirit-laden-belly that “normal” bacon maybe wouldn’t.
Wet Fish are apparently famous for their Flat Whites, so I ordered one and even though I don’t drink enough coffee to be any sort of an authority (my heart-rate jacks up about 50% at the mere whiff of espresso), this was excellent. Full flavoured and not destroyed by an over-milkiness that normally blights such drinks.
So a solid breakfast, a nice buzzy crowd with some decent eye-candy knocking around and enough of a difference to the regular grease-fest to ensure that I’ll go back. My mate had eggs with corn bread – I didn’t taste this as my own portion was ample, but he declared himself very happy.
Now, one heavy night is not wisely followed by another. But nobody said shit about me being wise, so I merrily made my way south of the river to a leaving party for a friend who this week departs for somewhere “hot and sandy”. Nuff said. High spirited night that wrapped up around 5am.
You know that feeling where you wake up in the morning. And you’re not sure how hungover you’re going to be. Pre-hangover stasis. It only lasts a split second and it’s blissful because the next thing that hits you is a dirty, great big, kick in the nuts as post-piss-up pain saturates every fibre of you being. Your mouth tastes like some doggy has been playing fast and loose with the “fouling-laws”, your eyes shudder with headache vibrations. And your stomach… well it registers protest with considerable vitriol.
Now a post-cocktail hangover on a Friday allows for some latitude in what one might consume. But when you’ve mixed cider, red wine, port, gin, Jaegermeister, red bull and Christ knows what else the very next day… then no fancy-schmancy fry-up will suffice. No, here you need good old English grease, true and proper. Artery cloying brilliance. Salty, processed tasty goodness. And assisting me from the floor of the apartment, my partners in crime and I shuffle down Twickenham High Street in pursuit of the ethereal goodness of a year’s supply of saturated fat.
It takes only a split second to realise you’re in a Wetherspoons. The distinguishing features are all there – tripped-out carpets from a bad LSD-trip that would scare Hunter S. Thompson, fruit machines that dazzle your eyes senseless and the laminated menu cards that bear the battle-scars of hastily served bangers and mash where the gravy has made a bit for freedom.
This is not a high class breakfast. More food than I can eat for £3.79. Beans – yum. Sausage – tastes like about oooohhh, I don’t know… maybe 25% pork. At best. Doesn’t matter - yum. Black pudding – oh yes. That’s what I need. The whole thing, a gratifying release from the grimness that overindulgence invariably throws back at you. This may be food at the unfashionable end of foodie circles. Actually I know it is. But if this makes me a pariah, so be it.
Because I had two breakfasts this weekend.
1: The Wet Fish, which was more expensive, better quality, better tasting, in a nicer atmosphere and quite civilised. And it was really rather good.
and
2. A cheap-ass, skanky plethora of mass-produced, heart-attacking inducing muck from a ‘Spoons that normally I wouldn’t even consider. And it was absolutely glorious.
There’s a moral in there somewhere. But I’ll consider it more thoughtfully when I’m less in need of recuperation.
