Manchester: Breakfasts

I'm a firm believer that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Without breakfast I'm a grumpy, lightheaded mess and nobody wants to hang out with that version of me!

Before my trip to Manchester I did a little research and scoped out where the best breakfasts were at. I didn't manage to eat them all but I did fit in three proper brekkies.

The first was on Sunday morning when we had a PPK meet up at Bistro 1847 in Chorlton. We all ordered the Full Breakfast and we managed not to start a riot when they told us that they were out of both avocado and soya milk!

This breakfast consists of two homemade sausages, tofu scramble, spinach, mushrooms, homemade spicy beans and toast. It comes with a side of vegan margarine.

This breakfast was mostly good, especially the sausages, which were lovely and crisp on the outside. I also loved the crispy French bread toast. The tofu scramble tasted a whole lot better than it looked, it was the first time I've had a scramble with neither nutritional yeast nor turmeric in the ingredients but it was still very flavourful. The only part I disliked was the beans, I am a firm believer that a breakfast bean should be a proper baked bean and not just any kind of tomato & bean combo - I have friends who think the total opposite of me on this point though and everyone else enjoyed them so it's just a personal preference thing!

My next breakfast adventure was at Odd Bar in the Northern Quarter. They don't start serving breakfast until 11am so as you can imagine I was pretty hungry by the time my meal arrived. Their vegan breakfast includes toast, baked beans, mushroom, tomato, a sausage, a hash brown, a spicy three bean patty and tofu scramble. As you can see there's no tofu scramble in this picture - they were out of tofu but I got an extra sausage and an extra mushroom instead.

I really enjoyed the falafel sausages which make a fun change from the often store-bought sausages I see in breakfasts down south and I was happy to see my favourite Heinz beans making an appearance. I also appreciated the inclusion of the hash brown as there aren't enough UK breakfast places including a potato product in their full English. The herby tomato made a nice change from the usual pepper covered tom' but due to the spice factor I wasn't the biggest fan of the bean patty.

I would definitely re-visit Odd and order this breakfast again but they really need to get some margarine! When I asked the guy working there for it he said "someone asked for it yesterday and I had to disappoint them too", they also disappointed the two people ordering after me who were both vegan too. Given that this place is a stones throw from a health food store I would have thought that the tofu / margarine issues could have been resolved quite easily.

My final stop for breakfast was Oklahoma, again in the Northern Quarter. The vegan breakfast options at Oklahoma are all toast based and you can add beans, jam, PB, marmalade or Marmite. You can also order sandwiches or baked sweet potatoes right from when they open at 10 if you fancy a more out-there breakfast. Unsurprisingly I went for my favourite start to the day - baked beans on toast.

These beans were close enough to Heinz that I loved them but they had a slightly different and more interesting depth of flavour. I should really have asked what brand they were or if they were homemade because they were super delicious. I also loved the granary bread which was toasted until beautifully golden and slathered in margarine. What a perfectly delicious end to my trip.

Two other places rumoured to have good breakfast options in Manchester are Eighth Day who apparently do a sausage sarnie and start serving food much earlier than anywhere else in the city and Mod's Cafe at The Thirsty Scholar which sometimes has a full English which includes veggie bacon. You can rest assured that I'll be checking them both out next time.