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.

Frankly you probably shouldn’t but in time-honoured blogging fashion, I’m sycophantic enough to think that what I write should be read by the general public and know just how right I am. About everything. Not least food and drink.

Of course, my knowledge of food and drink is easily surpassed by a great, great many people. Thank Christ. Otherwise Michelin standards would most likely reach the lofty heights of the Red Leicester and malted bread sandwich that I just finished (complete with lazily spread Flora). So whilst I’m not an expert, I’m definitely an enthusiast. I adore my food, I want to learn more, I want to eat more new things, I want to be a better cook, I want to understand food more and make more exciting dishes. I want to eat in new restaurants.  I want to have more of those incredible experiences where a flavour just catches you by surprise and you know you’ll remember that sensation and taste for the rest of your life. The food I eat each day won’t always been so shockingly wonderful. Not a chance. But if I can improve the experience I have with each meal, even just a little, then that’s something very worthwhile.

That’s what this blog is about. It’s charting the highs and lows of meals, the ones I buy, the ones I cook and the ones that (hopefully) get cooked for me.

So what’s the twist…

Well you know I love food. Blah-de-blah. You surely do too. But guess what? I don’t live a perfect, glossy cookery-book lifestyle. I’m frequently stressed to distraction and suddenly the urge to prepare a gourmet meal deserts me. I eat crap. I stay late in the pub, stuff my face with a dirty kebab on the way home and breath garlic sauce on my poor girlfriend. And even when I do cook, I can balls it up. I often break my pastry. I cook something and think “yeah, grand, very nice – but not really worth the effort, is it?”. I make curries, it’s the end of the month, I’ve waxed all my cash (again!) and I don’t buy the holier-than-thou free range chicken.

In other words, I may love my food, and I’m aspirational in what I eat. But real life has a nasty habit of interfering in that aim.  So this blog is going to be honest. It’s about the flaws as much as the fancy.

So it’s going to be a bit like Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries. Except with trauma (kitchen and otherwise), swearing, petulant opinions, cooking cock-ups, dining disasters, attempts at humour in addition to the triumphs and successes that make food so incredibly worthwhile.

In reading it, I hope you find something that makes you think “ah yes, I know just what you’re talking about” I hope it makes you smirk, giggle or smile. And if I could be so bold, perhaps you might even find something useful (I’m not as hopeless as so of my posts may suggest).

Finally, I hope you’re a publisher and you spot the hither-to hidden gem of talent that lurks in me. The offer me a massive contract that enables me to buy a Hampstead mansion, penning occasional missives whilst lovingly tending to a slow-cooked curry and a bottle of red.