Why a fry-up wins my UK versus US breakfast comparison
A box of toaster pastries in Sainsbury’s sent me down a breakfast rabbit hole. I’d spent a week thinking about American breakfasts versus British ones: what we pictured when somebody mentioned breakfast, and what we actually ate before going to work. Those weren’t necessarily the same meal.
I’m Canadian, had lived in the UK for eight years and had spent a lot of time in the US. That made me a very unofficial referee. I loved looking at enormous restaurant breakfasts, but my own vote would come down to whether I wanted something sweet or savoury on the plate.
A toaster pastry took me back to high school
The box that started it was Toast’em Pop-Ups, a Pop-Tart alternative I found in the American section at Sainsbury’s. These were the s’mores flavour. They reminded me of the toaster pastries I’d eaten in Canada before high school, or when I needed a quick breakfast in the US.
I particularly remembered chocolate-chip ones, like a cookie around a gooey chocolate middle. Toasting them was an option, but when I was running late for school, I’d grab one and eat it cold on the way. I also remembered the crust being the worst bit, sometimes bad enough that I’d get rid of it.
Trying the s’mores version brought those memories straight back. Even though this wasn’t the actual Pop-Tart brand, it tasted exactly how I remembered that flavour from childhood. For a moment I felt fifteen again. It was a very sweet, very convenient breakfast, and tasting it made me want to talk about the bigger comparison.
The restaurant breakfasts were spectacular
When I thought of an American breakfast, I pictured fluffy pancakes, waffles or French toast with syrup. I’d recently had waffles myself and bought Canadian maple syrup at Tesco, which felt like a treat. Sweet breakfasts were the obvious starting point in my head.
Some of the restaurant options I found took that much further. There was a Dunkin’ breakfast wrap made with a pancake and served with syrup. One Denny’s option combined pancakes, vanilla cream, bananas and salted caramel with eggs, hash browns and bacon or sausage. Another had brioche French toast filled with sweet cream cheese and topped with strawberries, sauce and powdered sugar.
I loved looking at those meals. They were restaurant examples I’d found while researching, though, rather than evidence of what everybody made at home on a Tuesday. That distinction mattered once I started asking what people normally had for breakfast.
My fry-up needs hash browns
For Britain, the first breakfast I thought of was a full English: eggs, sausage, bacon, beans and toast. I wasn’t particularly interested in the fried tomatoes or mushrooms, and I could take or leave black pudding. Hash browns, however, absolutely belonged on my plate. I knew some people objected that they were American. I wanted them anyway.
That breakfast was meaty and savoury, which was the biggest contrast for me. Even the quicker café option I described, ham, eggs, chips and beans, was savoury. It was a long way from pancakes with syrup, although I wasn’t pretending every British person ate a fry-up before catching the train.
When I asked followers what they normally ate, lots of British replies mentioned cereal, perhaps toast and tea. Some said crumpets with butter, and others described saving a homemade fry-up for a day when they weren’t working. The big breakfast was available without being their everyday breakfast.
The same qualification applied to the Americans. In two polls I came across, eggs were the leading breakfast choice. That complicated my sugary-breakfast idea, although eggs could also come alongside those elaborate pancakes and French toast. I couldn’t treat a restaurant’s biggest offering as an entire country’s morning routine.
Cereal at home, a fry-up at Gatwick
My own usual breakfast had been cereal with chopped fruit, continuing what I’d eaten in Canada. It took me a while to find a cereal I liked here because a lot tasted plain to me. Crunchy Nut became a favourite, with blueberries and strawberries added before I caught the bus to work.
By the time I filmed this, I wasn’t having breakfast very often. I had developed another tradition, though: when I was at Gatwick waiting to fly back to Canada for a visit, I’d have a full English and perhaps a pint. It was an airport. Time didn’t matter.
So my best-breakfast award went to the UK. I preferred a savoury fry-up to pancakes beside my eggs and bacon, and wanted toast, beans and those excellent hash browns. That didn’t make the stereotype of Americans eating huge sugary breakfasts every day fair. I suspected plenty of us on both sides were having a much more ordinary bowl of cereal or some toast before work.
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