Venue number four in the £5 Breakfast Challenge was Sandwich Box, which is the last one on our side of the road before Acton Lane. Given that it’s right next to the Luna Caffe it’s pretty easy to miss, or at least to mistake them as the same place!

Coming in at only £4, including a coffee or tea (with no extra charge for a latte), their Full English Breakfast is easily the best value that we’ve encountered so far. Their coffee was really good, too – a little on the large size for me, but the favour was great.

As you can see, the food was also generously proportioned: two eggs, two pieces of toast, a sausage, two rashers of bacon, a hashbrown, baked beans, mushrooms, and tomato. On the plus side, the eggs were perfectly cooked, with solid whites but runny yolks. I also quite enjoyed the sausage – a little salty, but it had a nice smokey flavour, like at Luna.

The rest of the meal tasted good enough (though once again I wasn’t a fan of the bacon); however this is the first place we’ve eaten at and felt a bit shady afterwards. Perhaps it was from the sheer quantity of food, though we both think that the quality of the ingredients may have been on the lower side of average.

They also lose points for not offering any fresh juice; I had trouble with the bird’s accent and couldn’t work out if they had run out or if they simply didn’t have it, but I suspect it’s the latter.

To their credit, we walked away feeling very full, and at only nine quid for our two breakfasts and a bottle of juice, my wallet didn’t even take too big a hit. If I was only after a coffee, then Sandwich Box would be top of my list of places to revisit, but for breakfast, I think we’ll be taking our money elsewhere. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

One of the presents that Jason and Susan sent me for my birthday was a KeepCup. I’d never heard of these until I unwrapped it, but the concept is fairly simple – a reusable coffee cup, that looks like a disposable cup. Genius!

For some reason though, I kept forgetting to take it with me to work, so for the last two weeks, it has been sitting on the shelf at home, looking at me shamefully. Thank goodness Stacey kept nagging me to send her a photo and a review – I finally packed it yesterday for it’s inaugural coffee run!

I’m pleased to say that the cup performed swimmingly! The girl at Costa clearly wasn’t used to people bringing in their own cups, because when I asked her if I could use it, she defensively asked, “What’s wrong with my cup?”. She was equally unimpressed when I told her that her cups were environmentally unfriendly; but eventually she gave in and used my cup. I kept a careful eye on her to make sure she didn’t spit into my coffee.

Besides the obvious environmental benefits, I also love that they’re a “standard” size according to Australian baristas. This means that the ratio of coffee to milk much closer than what it usually is over here. And, since the cup is smaller than the Brit’s usual “small” cup, the coffee is cheaper, too!

All up, and absolutely excellent present – one I can’t recommend highly enough for the take-out coffee lover in your family. Thanks, Jason and Susan!

(Happy now, Racey?)

Next up in the £5 breakfast challenge was the Hot House Cafe, only a few doors down from the Blueberry cafe. It markets itself as an internet cafe, but with a Full English Breakfast for sale at only £4.95 including coffee, it’s definitely a contender for the breakfast crowd.

(It was raining quite heavily when we went, so I couldn’t take an outside photo.)

One of the first things that we noticed about Hot House was that it seemed to have a bunch of regular patrons; either that, or all the waitresses were psychic and were doing a lot of mind reading. I suspect it’s the former. This suggested to me that we were in for quite a treat!

Hot House’s “Full English Breakfast” consisted of two bacon rashers, a sausage, mushrooms, two fried eggs, a hash brown, baked beans, and two pieces of (heavily buttered) toast. Like Blueberry, I wasn’t given an option on the type of toast that I wanted, but their default option tried to cater for everyone with one piece each white and brown bread. Their breakfast also included a tea or a coffee which I thought was very generous, even though they charged me an extra 50p to upsize to a latte (instead of regular black coffee).

Overall, the meal was quite good, though everything was rather salty, most especially the bacon. Also on the downside was the hash brown which was a little soggy, and the baked beans which were quite bland – as if the sauce was there just to hold the beans together but not to provide any flavour. The sausage was quite good though; the mushrooms were even better, and the eggs were the absolute highlight of the meal – perfectly cooked with solid whites, but runny yolks. Yum!

My 50p coffee was acceptable, though I wouldn’t go there if all I was after was a coffee. They didn’t use fresh beans, and instead opted for pre-ground coffee from a tin in the fridge. And though the coffee didn’t taste bad, it was a little light on any. Perhaps a second shot would have helped, though not as much as freshly ground beans would have.

Kristy opted out of this challenge, and instead had smoked salmon (which was quite generously apportioned) over scrambled eggs, and a freshly squeezed orange juice. Bonus points to them for taking “freshly squeezed” very literally, with a huge orange juicer behind the counter!

All up we paid only £11.35 for both of our meals, and we both walked out with very satisfied bellies. I don’t think the quality of the food was quite as good as it was at Blueberry, however it wasn’t far off. Hot House definitely scores higher on both variety and value for money though, and given the choice between the two, I’d be hard pressed to make a decision. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

When we first came (back) to Chiswick to sign the lease on our flat, I noticed that between here and Turnham Green, there are at least 5 cafes that each offer some form of breakfast for £5 or less. Helllloooo… do I hear a challenge in the making? Yes I do!

Enter: The £5 breakfast challenge. Yes, it’s an extremely creative name, and I laboured over it until I was happy. I was also considering dropping the pound sign, and instead going for “The five pound breakfast challenge”, because I’m using a US keyboard and I don’t have a convenient button for “£”. However, I felt that our dear American readers may think I’m trying to eat five pounds of breakfast foods, rather than spending five pounds on breakfast. It’s an important distinction.

Anyway – the first cafe to unknowingly step up to the plate was the Blueberry Cafe. From the outside, it definitely looks like the swankiest of them all, but a rather unfortunately placed red statue blocks its view of the high rode. (Note: it may look like a mail box, however Royal Mail are on strike these days more often than not, so it doesn’t work like a mail box).

Blueberry’s £5 breakfast comes with two fried eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, baked beans, and two pieces of wholegrain toast. Kristy and I both liked that wholegrain was the default bread – given the option of white, we both probably would have taken it, yet the wholegrain was delicious and nutritious! Still, some options would have been nice – I’m not really a bacon person, and would have preferred to swap out my rashers for sausages if I could have; and I love me some breakfast tomato.

A few points off for not offering any beverage with the meal – we each ordered a freshly squeezed OJ, which we felt was a decent size, and fairly good value for money. I also ordered a latte, which unfortunately was about the size of a child’s beach bucket, and far, far too hot for my liking.

The addition of three beverages to our meal drove the cost up to around £16, however I figured that if you’re going to go somewhere for breakfast, you’re likely to want at least one accompanying beverage, so they should be part of the review.

Blueberry suffers from “the first cab off the rank” syndrome – once we’ve been to each of the cafes, it may on reflection be the best, but until that point we can only rate it on its lonesome. The food was definitely well prepared, and high quality, but not quite enough variety to bring home the proverbial bacon. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.

Remember how we home roasted coffee beans with The Durhams, all that time ago when we were back in Australia? Remember how crazy the Brezzinator 44 was, and how doubtful you all were that it would work*? Yeah? Well – check this out!

Beautiful crema!

Yeah! That should keep all you haters quiet! Not only was the crema amazing, but it tasted amazing, too! The whole packet didn’t last a week – we were having doubles every morning!

So thanks very much Durhams – please open a store for us in Putney, we’re fresh out of beans!

* Doubts may be false, I’m not sure anyone is even reading anymore, since I changed web hosts.

Yes, it may look like a paint stripper which has burnt a hole into an old bread maker, and all sitting atop a four-burner BBQ tray, but what you’re actually looking at my friends, is the Brezzinator 44: The Durhams’ coffee roasting machine. No, I didn’t believe it would work either when I first saw it, but you’d be amazed at how effective it is!

Fired up for around 15 minutes, the paint stripper pushes the temperature of the coffee beans up to around 215 degrees celcius where they go through two distinct cracking phases. The trick to a nice roast is to quickly transfer the beans to the fan-mounted cooling tray, which rapidly brings their temperature down before the sugar caramalizes too much (and they develop a distinct burnt flavour).

Only time (and our seasoned palettes of course) will tell how good they taste, but if the sample we enjoyed at the Durhams’ house beforehand was any indication – well, suffice to say we’re in for a flavour sensation when we get back to old Blighty.

A number of weeks ago (well, to be honest, it was on my tour of the office when I first started 18 months ago) I noticed an espresso machine tucked away in the corner of our kitchen at work. “Hello…” I thought, “what have we here?”. It was a stupid question really; clearly it was an espresso machine.

Regrettably, instead of immediately going out and buying some beans and trying that sucker out, I held off. And since the kitchen is at the other end of the building to me, it’s rare that I pay it a visit – hence the espresso machine faded from my memory. But a man needs his espresso – so I joined the rest of the lads from work in subjecting myself to the horrible “coffee” served up by the local vendors. It’s so appalling that Starbucks became our local supplier. Yes, it pains me to write it as much as it pains you to read it. I’m even more ashamed to admit that we go there so often that the staff know us all. By name.

But no more! I recently had to visit the kitchen to search for some stolen tupperware, and during my search I again encountered the espresso machine. “Hello!” I thought, “What have we here?”. Once again a stupid question, but I’m not the fastest learner when it comes to kitchen appliances.

So today I took the machine for a test run. I must admit, it’s not the most beautiful piece of equipment you’ve ever seen – it’s clear that the other users don’t treat it too well (dried coffee stuck in the grouphead, overflowing drip-tray, etc etc). But like a four-eyed librarian that rises to become the prom queen in a cheesy Disney flick, I managed to extract every ounce of potential that the little thing could muster.

And the results were – well, exceptional! All I need is a better frothing jug (an empty mug just doesn’t cut it) and it’ll be latte art time at work. Yeah, baby!

… to Al an Suz, for sending us some Zarraffa’s Coffee all the way from Australia! We’re almost at the bottom of our current bag, and I reckon we’ll be onto this stuff before the week is out.

Meanwhile, they must have each donated one of their vital organs to afford the postage; why-oh-why does Australia Post have to charge such unreasonable fees to send things overseas?! I’m sure that explains why we don’t get care packages more often…. *sniff*

Kristy is away today, so there’s no-one here to drink the second shot of our morning espresso. We’re currently on Monmouth Coffee beans which ordinarily quite nice; but I’m sorry to report, today’s coffee is exceptional.

*sigh* What a waste.

Two doctors in one week! Well, three if you count my lovely friend Suz in Australia, but I didn’t call her for medical advice, so probably just the two.

Anyway – tonight’s visit was to our regular doctor, and was pre-booked on Monday. (As an aside: I don’t particularly like that you have to book so very far in advance for a doctor’s appointment over here – hence why I had to go to the walk-in clinic on Wednesday. Still, to book on Monday and be seen on Friday is from all accounts somewhat of a miracle, so I guess I can’t complain too much.)

Today’s doctor – Doctor Drewry to be precise (though I’m sure my spelling of his name is anything but precise) has prescribed a nasal spray for me to start taking. Two pumps per nostril. He reckons that it will help prevent my issue of my nose becoming uber-blocked as soon as I lie down (which in turn makes me snore good, but sleep bad). Good news indeed; except that it will take up to two weeks before it has any effect! So now I’m trialling this system for three months, and if after that time I’m still having issues, he’s going to refer me to an ENT specialist.

On a related topic, lovely friend Shelley (yes I have more than one lovely friend) reckons I should try giving up dairy for a week to see if that clears up my sinuses. I’m not sure how I feel about this one though; lately it seems as though going dairy free and waving the “lactose intolerant” flag is the new vegetarian, so I’m kind-of defiant out of principle. Plus – what would I have in my lattes?!

(Latte shot especially for Gute!)