Tattie scones and streaky bacon

St. Paul's Cathedral on a grey London day

It's been almost 11 years but I am back in London again. My first day started off with Gail, Colin and a few of their colleagues and clients at brunch at a fancy place called Roast, in Borough Market. Opened in 2005 in an historic building with tall glass windows offering a good view over the market, it's not a budget destination, so I was happy that it was all being expensed. The £12 "Full Bourough", consisting of smoked streaky bacon, Cumberland sausage, fried toast (?!?), black pudding (congealed blood in sausage format), grilled tomatoes, field mushrooms and a egg, seemed too artery-clogging even for me, so I opted for the "Tattie scone with with streaky bacon, field mushrooms and a fried egg" (£8.50=$17), orange juice (£3=$6) and a cappuccino (£2.50=$5).

If you need a dictionary to understand what it was I actually ate, you're not alone. With other menu offerings including "cottage loaf", "Orkney kippers", and "egg butty", I was glad to have some Brits at the table to translate. My "tattie scone" was essentially two square potato latkes and the "streaky bacon" is what we would call just plain old "bacon". However, this last term is just not enough here since, as our view over the market attested, there are myriad types of bacon available for sale. Breakfast here just insn't as simple as we would like it to be.

My first meal in London was also my first experience in British service. My scone came out sans fried egg, Gail's orange juice was missing the cranberry juice she had requested to be mixed in, and another girl's hot chocolate appeared in the form of a cappuccino. And this is an upscale place! As Gail and other expats would later tell me, the service, or lack thereof, is one of the exasperating points of living in London and it spans everything from restaurants to plumbers to couriers. The upside is that taxes are included in the price you see and tipping is generally not necessary. At $28 for my breakfast, I should hope not.

The bad is measured with the good, though, and there is enough of the latter here to outweigh the former. We headed off to the Tate Modern Museum, which has free entry, as do all state museums in London. Afterwards, we crossed the Millenium Bridge and walked around a few different areas including Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Soho, and Oxford Street. London has some ridiculously good shopping as long as you know where to look, and Gail and Colin have all the places figured out.

While we had used the underground to get into town, we decided to take the bus to head home. Apparently, while in principle the system is good and extensive, there is no such thing as transfers, so riders must repay the fare every time they switch lines or switch between methods of transport. In addition, it's not uncommon for buses to break down (we passed two for the same route 200m apart), forcing all the passengers to find another way home, without any compensation for their lost ride. The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that getting on and off is rather quick since nearly all riders use the Oyster transit card. It makes sense to do so: with a single adult non-card fare set at £4 ($8), riding with the Oyster card costs significantly less (£1.50 for the tube and 80p for the bus).

And that was the first day. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home.