Those algorithms, eh? I spend far too much time surfing through YouTube videos, sometimes of places I have been to and at other times, sometimes places I am going to. Quite often, I find myself enjoying videos of the Canary Island of Lanzarote. We’ve been there a few times and the platform has worked out what it thinks I like. Yesterday I came across one called ‘OH MY, WHY CAN WE NOT FIND A DECENT BREAKFAST?’
This video is presented by a follically-challenged British tourist/expat/migrant on a channel called The Lollie and Markie Show and filmed on what is known as ‘The Strip’ in Playa Del Carmen, Lanzarote and while it’s not exactly a polished, professional show, that’s because it doesn’t pretend to be. I am guessing that the man in the video is Markie. Anyway, as the title suggests, Markie mourns the fact that he cannot find ‘a decent breakfast’.
By breakfast, Markie is not referring to the Spanish mesa desayuno (breakfast table). He means the traditional full English or Irish breakfast. For much of my life, this brought out the very worst in me, until last year.
For someone from working class stock, I took the most hideous snobby attitude towards Brits abroad, sneering at the Sunday Roast, English beer, full English brigade. Why, instead of always sticking to the familiar, didn’t they try the local food?
This was more than a little rich coming from me, the least adventurous ‘eater’ on the planet. In fact, it’s that bad that I treat foods I am not familiar with as if they were an unexploded bomb. A GP wondered if I suffered from ARFID because things could be so extreme. Who knows? There are no tests for these things. But there’s me, scratching around a menu, trying to find something I might like without my. throat closing up and not being able to eat anything. And I am criticising Brits for being fussy eaters?
There were two main reasons I objected to eating British-type breakfasts abroad. One was innate snobbery on my part, the other being the ingredients used. I remember eating a so-called English breakfast in Corfu once and finding myself appalled by what I was eating. Stringy, tasteless bacon, fried eggs cooked in olive oil, the cheapest imaginable baked beans swimming in thin tomato juice and what was in those sausages? Bloody English abroad, I concluded. Embarrassing. But last year, in Lanzarote, I realised, yet again, what an absolute twat I was. My son, who was with us, went for a breakfast wrap in a British café and raved about it, especially the pint of ice cold draught beer that came with it. Sod it, I decided. I’m going to try one of these, but don’t tell anyone.
I was in a different resort to Markie and checked the menu. It was absurdly cheap and so couldn’t be any good. But it was good. Bloody good. A proper English type sausage, non smoked bacon (what is the point of smoking bacon?), mushrooms that unlike the Greek version didn’t come in a tin, fried eggs that weren’t swimming in olive oil and no beans, thank you, although the ones my lad chose looked fine.
I did not consume the full English every day we were away, but I certainly went there a couple of times, which is a couple of times more often than I do at home. I suppose I shouldn’t, on the basis of ‘When in Rome’ and all that malarkey, but the truth is in so many Brit friendly islands, I’d be in a very small minority eating the local delicacy.
The very idea of a working class kid from Bristol, raised in poverty by a single parent, being a snob is absurd, given the rubbish I ate as a child. Yet in some way I was, looking down on Brits abroad enjoying bingo, karaoke, Robbie Williams tribute acts (he was crap, mind) or the full range of English food but I’d like to think I’m better than that now.
Now, I have more sympathy with Lollie and Markie because if your idea of Canary Island heaven is a decent full English, then good for you. Because now, having tasted a particularly good one, I’m looking forward to my next one. Sorry!
