I had never heard of the Partridges Food Market until Saturday morning when Kristy suggested we go and check it out. So check it out we did, and it’s awesome!

We turned up around 2 PM, and we were both hankering for a late lunch. The only downside of the markets was that every store seemed to offer something that we wanted, but we only had limited stomach room (let alone cash to burn)! Making a decision was near impossible! We eventually settled on Moroccan Flat Bread filled with lamb and tomato – delicious!

Since we were on our way to Al and Becca’s for the evening, we also picked up a mixed pack of 12 mini cupcakes from Crumbs and Doilies. Their flavour of the week (month?) was “salted caramel”, though I must admit I had difficult working out which ones they were, and which were the vanilla. Not that I was complaining; that was merely an excuse to eat more – you know, to do some more thorough testing…

We definitely want to check out the markets again; next time I’ll be getting a half-dozen oysters (only £5!) followed by a nutella crepe.

One of the things that Weezy insisted Lauren try while she was here is the very English dish of a baked potato. Yes, we have them in Australia, and yes, you can get them pretty much anywhere in the world. But, do they look like this?

(Yeah, they probably do, don’t they?)

Oh my, that was one filling meal, and I didn’t even get through it all. At least I ate all of the side-salad, which Weezy and Lauren both just ignored! Still, you can’t blame them; look how shocked Lauren was at the prospect of eating so many carbs!

Mmm…. beans….

It’s twenty-past-twelve in the morning, and I’m making puttanesca pasta. Is that so wrong? I just wish we had some garlic! It was either that, or stop off for a kebab on the way home.

I think I should have gone for the kebab.

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.

OK, it may not really be Chellsie’s tart, but she’s the one who first made it for us, so as far as I’m concerned, she may as well have invented it. Kristy and I eat this one every few weeks and it never fails to satisfy!

(Takes 45 minutes, Serves 4)

Ingredients

• 25g butter
• 2 large red onions, finely sliced
• 2 tbsp light muscovado sugar
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• flour, for dusting
• 450g puff pastry, thawed if frozen
• 100g feta, crumbled
• 175g black olives, pitted and chopped
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• shredded basil leaves, to garnish
• green salad, to serve

With all the travelling we’ve done lately, we were very happy to have a low-key New Year’s celebration this year, and that’s exactly what we did! We started off by eating a massive bowl of home-made guacamole (roughly using the Chipotle recipe) while watching the finale and reunion show for Survivor Season 19. All accompanied by a drink or two, of course!

Ariella and Paul came over around 9 PM and we shared a Turkish dinner, played a round of Buzz, and then kicked off a game of Settlers. Why oh why no-one rolled a four is beyond me!

We flicked over to the Beeb just before midnight for the official countdown, and to watch the fireworks over the Thames. I must say, the ones that were fired off the London Eye were very impressive!

We finished off our game of Settlers, played another round of Buzz, then called it a night at around 1 AM. We started the New Year on the right foot by sleeping in until 10 AM, two coffees, and the most delicious pancakes I think I’ve ever eaten.

2010 is going to be awesome!

Not only has the £5 breakfast challenge been a huge success (we probably wouldn’t have bothered to try all the breakfast places without it – and we still have two to go!) – but now we’re actually getting requests to be reviewed! So, even though it was outside the “rules” of being a £5 breakfast place along the high road, we decided to overlook it just this once, for breakfast at the very exclusive Monkey Inn.

Firstly, it must be noted that we weren’t allowed to pay cash for our meal; instead, we had to work to be fed! See, our hosts had thrown a foosball party the prior evening, and we ended up sleeping over – so in the morning we were required to help fold the gaming table away, and then reassemble the dining room furniture, in exchange for breakfast. Actually, I really liked this method of payment, and the cafes on the high road would do well to provide this alternative!

Once we were seated, head chef Suzie served up an amazing breakfast of a fried egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, organic baked beans, wholegrain toast, and orange juice. And to top it all off, sous chef Nick served up a lovely red bottle of tomato sauce, which was placed in precisely the perfect location on the table to account for each patron’s relative desire for ketchup. Absolutely, the pièce de résistance!

Kristy and I were well impressed at the layout of the restaurant. The dining room table was strategically placed in the centre of the open kitchen, so that the chefs could converse with the patrons during cooking, and then join them for the meal. They told us how they only believed in serving the absolute highest quality of food – in fact, their eggs were so free range, that the chickens all enjoy six weeks paid holiday per year, in Hawaii! Simply amazing.

The meal itself was a perfect portion – for the first time I wasn’t overloaded with bacon, and everything (well, except the beans and a few stray mushies) fitted perfectly on my single slice of toast. Best of all, the package included free, unlimited refills of orange juice!

The Monkey Inn is a bit of an exclusive club – breakfast is strictly by invitation only, but if you do manage to make it onto the guest list, you’d be doing yourself a favour by accepting. gerrod.com rating: 10/10.

Who’d have thought that the breakfast places would just keep getting better? Al and Becks stayed over on Friday night, so they joined us for this week’s £5 Breakfast Challenge at the Luna Caffe. Once again, I forgot to take a photo from the outside, so I’ll have to add one in at a later date.

Luna’s breakfast menu was the cheapest yet – only £3.50 for the Full English, or £3.95 with a tea or a coffee. The first thing they served was our toast (which we got to choose from white or brown), and I devoured mine the moment it got to the table. It was delicious! I suspect it’s strongly to do with the amount of butter they piled on, but hey, it’s only once a week…

The breakfast plate consisted of two fried eggs, tomato, sausage, bacon, hash brown, mushrooms, and baked beans; and it was all delicious! The sausage had a real smoky flavour, and this carried over to the beans and the mushrooms. Even the bacon was quite good, though not being the biggest fan I left one of the rashers. Again, I would have preferred the option of an extra sausage over any bacon, and Luna strikes me as the type of place that would allow the change (e.g. Becca had scrambled eggs instead of fried).

The only thing I can mark them down for was that they had run out of fresh orange juice, and my bottle of mango juice really didn’t satisfy. Such a shame – they were so close to perfection! gerrod.com rating: 9/10.

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.