Breakfast food around the world

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper is some very old advice that seems to ring true with many breakfast offerings below. The energy provided by the first meal of the day isn’t likely to be stored around your waistline because you will be using it, right?

Thunder Bay, Ontario: “Hey Rory, want to go fishing tomorrow”? Rory answers, “I’ve got to fix the car instead but, hey, let’s have breakfast at the Hoito with the kids”. The answer of course is, “Yep, see you there”. They go early because they have a busy day ahead and a hearty Finnish-turned-Canadian breakfast is the perfect beginning.

At the Hoito, they see friends and get a table next to each other. The restaurant (ravintola) is packed with people from all walks of life, many of them loyal regulars who’ve been eating here for decades starting when they would come with their parents. With gray hair, they’re now showing up with grandchildren for the divine Finnish pancakes, French toast pulla -, sausages, eggs, toast with butter, Karelian pastries, free coffee refills, oatmeal… In the city in northwestern Ontario, there’s hardly anything more Canadian than a Finnish breakfast. Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/HoitoRestaurant/menu/

Now we have breakfast in Kuching, Malaysia, where the food heritage is influenced by many cultures. You can choose noodle dishes, roti, Indian flatbreads, and soups made with local ingredients. The meals could pass for lunch or supper, with seafood, chicken, beef and pork as popular ingredients, a delicious start to the day. Nasi lemak and laksa are typical choices. Here are some typical Malaysian breakfasts: https://3thanwong.com/top-10-malaysian-breakfast/

Bacon and Eggs, etc.
In several regions like North America, Scotland, England, Australia, there are interesting local variations to the pancake, French toast, bacon-and-egg breakfast menu.
The UK introduces black pudding, which you should probably eat so as to give it a fair chance to win over your taste buds before you read about it. It’s available at the market in Groningen if you’d like to give it a try.
Scotland: wonderful oatmeal porridge.
Australia: add grilled tomatoes and mushrooms.
Southern US: add buttermilk biscuits, and breakfast grits
Count on regional differences to make breakfast an interesting experience. In the southern USA you could even try pork brains and eggs. http://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/regional-american-breakfast-foods

Travel around a bit and you’ll find a range of menu items like pancakes (thin and crepe-like or thick and fluffy according to local tastes), maple syrup, French toast, bacon, sausages, eggs fried or boiled, hash brown potatoes, baked beans, toast and jam, cracked wheat bread, rye bread, and usually plain old filter coffee that can be good enough to make the new fancy kinds superfluous. The Dutch uitsmijter can be adapted if you ask for the bread toasted and served on the side with butter and jam.

An Italian breakfast consists of a latte or espresso and a bread with jam, or pastry, or biscotti. A similarly light breakfast is enjoyed in France, perhaps with a croissant or pain au chocolat.

For other breakfast ideas around the world, look to Bhutan for rosewater lassi and pork with red rice, Iceland for skyr, and Mongolia for steamed or deepfried dumplings with a meat filling. In Chile you could have fresh bread with mashed avocado, kasha in Russia, papaya in Brazil, congee in Cambodia, and roti in India. There are so many different breakfasts that you would simply have to go around the world to try them!

Check these links out for some good ideas:

The following are some suggestions for finding special breakfast ingredients in Groningen:

blood pudding – Marktslager, on market days
croissants – Broodje van Eigen Deeg
biscotti – Bazaarz, and Ariola
laksa – Amazing Oriental
sambal – at any Toko
Cloudberry jam and cinnamon buns – Ikea
Maple syrup – G&W, some supermarkets
Russian honey and jams – Vjatka

Check these links out for some good ideas:

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