Full English breakfast @ The Original Eatwell
2a Catharine St, Liverpool, L8 7NL
The Full English exists on a spectrum — on one end are what you might call cooked breakfasts (pricier, more refined, usually made up of higher quality ingredients) and on the other are fry-ups (cheaper, less polished, with emphasis on quantity of food).
When categorising there are fewer hard and fast rules than you’d think — all kinds of Full English can be greasy, all can be under or over seasoned. That said if there are chips on the plate you’re eating a fry-up, and if the ‘house beans’ arrive in a separate ramekin then it’s definitely a cooked breakfast.
Breakfasts on both ends of the scale have their merits. Sometimes you’re in the mood for rare-breed bacon and poached eggs with a perfect runny yolk, sometimes for tinned tomatoes and floppy white toast. If you’re craving the latter, then you can’t go far wrong with a visit to Eatwell.
The little hole-in-the-wall on Catherine Street — which used to be a public toilet block — has been serving local workers and students from the nearby University of Liverpool campus for over 30 years. Add to that the 15 years an earlier incarnation of the café operated in Toxteth, and Chris has spent almost half a century making breakfasts.
Most customers opt for takeaway butties, baps and burgers (most which contain the greasy spoon holy trinity of sausage, egg and bacon in various permutations). To the right of the counter, though, are a handful of tables where you can sit and enjoy what is — for me — one of the finest Full Englishes in the city.
For less than a tenner you’ll get bacon, fried egg, two sausage, two black pudding, tomato, beans, mushrooms, two rounds of toast as well as the seldom-seen local speciality ‘ulster fry’ (basically a slice of crispy fried spam). And a cup of tea or coffee to wash it down with.
The sausages are deep-fried, mahogany-brown and bursting with rusk. The bacon is crispy to point of blackened at the edge. The ulster fry is salty, soft and a little bit sweet. Some might quibble and say the egg is little overdone, but as far as fry-ups go it’s near enough perfect.
