Wonder Cafe – Full English Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! It’s comforting and gives you energy for the rest of the day (or puts you into a food coma…). With a busy weekend ahead, I decided to go full out for mine and go for the full-English breakfast. But not just any full-English. Oh no, I haven’t had one in months, so it had to be special. I went for Wonder Café’s Full-English Breakfast Challenge, and what a sight it was to behold.

Now this is a full-English breakfast, unlike all of those you order that leave you questioning what you’re going to have for lunch later. Oh no, there will be none of that with this one. All thoughts of food leave your mind. Actually, all thoughts leave your mind as you slowly descend into the food coma nap afterwards as your body digests this meal.

The challenge consists of:

  • 6 rashers of bacon
  • 6 sausages
  • 6 hash browns
  • 4 black puddings
  • 4 fried slices of bread
  • 4 slices of toast
  • 4 eggs
  • One bowl of beans
  • One bowl of plum tomatoes
  • A healthy heap of mushrooms

You have 45 minutes to scoff it all. If you win, the meal is free, if you lose, you pay the full price of £20.

The breakfast at Wonder Café is a well renowned UK food challenge, featuring on most lists you search for, so it’s surprising it’s taken me that long to get to it. Part of it may come down to opening times since they close at 3pm, and the other being that I’m pretty much on the other side of the city, so the commute takes almost as long as it would for me to get to Birmingham.

Approach wise, I knew this would take up some capacity, so I wanted to conserve space, intentionally keeping water consumption down. Initially I wanted to go proteins > veggies > carbs, but the sheer quantity of bread alone and my overall pace meant I decided to switch things up pretty early on. A few sausages and rations of bacon in, I did the abominable. I went for carbs with proteins left. In my mind, it made sense, and in hindsight, this was a good shout. The logic was I’d need to get this bread over with one way or another, so might as well mix it up with other food to keep the flavour fatigue away.

After abandoning my initial plan, I initially just dipped the bread into either the beans or tomatoes with the intent to conserve external liquid consumption. The fried bread was buttered up enough that I may not have needed to. I wasn’t complaining at the delicious artery clogging goodness (don’t blame the butter for what the bread did though…). Quickly however, I realised I was indeed not a fan of plum tomatoes. Whilst their sharp acidic tang cut through and contrasted the other fatty items well, the flavour was just not quite hitting the spot for me and in my mind I wanted to be done with them.

So onto the next phase of my plan I went. Sandwiches. With so much bread and filling, I had a plethora of flavour combinations at my disposal to avoid flavour fatigue and have fun. It also gave me a way to hide those pesky plum tomatoes, masked with other flavours. So on I went chomping my merry way through beans on toast; bacons, sausage and egg sandwiches; bread on bread sandwiches…did I mention there was a lot of bread?

Truth be told, I think I was a little overly cautious, since it didn’t use up as much capacity as I had thought, so in hindsight, I could have sped up a bit more with water (although I would recommend a hot/warm drink instead). Then again, I was in no rush and enjoyed the experience. The only time I sped up again was towards the end, and then a mushroom fought back…so slow(ish) and steady was a good idea. My final time was 22:31. Not too shabby. Could I have gone faster? Yes. Did I want to? No. I wanted to enjoy my first fry up in months.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable challenge that left me feeling good afterwards, albeit a bit thirsty. The capacity requirement isn’t extreme, and the time limit quite reasonable. Please give this place a try, even if it is a trek. It’s quite the experience. One thing to note, I would call ahead, since when I arrived they said they usually don’t do it on weekends due to being busy, but I got lucky and they took pity on me. You probably know where to find it, but just in case:

Wonder Cafe

Uxbridge Rd, Hillingdon UB10 0PH

01895 232898

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

css.php