The USP:   Eggs, obviously.  But not your typical scrambled, fried or poached to break the morning fast, but as the tasty star to mouth-watering trimmings like mushroom ragu and crisp polenta or  hearty fried chicken / shrimp / braised beef / pork belly buns that you can imagine is a whole lot sexier than a fried egg sandwich.  Although they do one of those too – with sweet corn salsa – and it is quite sexy.

Having a break… At Egg Break

A photo posted by Matilda (@mstillytilda) on Sep 17, 2015 at 11:37am PDT

The food: Generous and no doubt, Instagrammable. The shrimp with green chilli, tomato and pineapple salsa was a joy to wolf down, with french fries and smoked bacon, one of their many breakfast-y sides. I also polished off the very naughty but nice baked salted caramel custard with creme fraiche for afters.

Budget: The prices here are my kind of cheerful for West London. A full English is a tenner and the buns range from £6-10, while sides are £2-4 and sweets roughly £4-6.  So three courses for 20-ish quid? Bargain. The £7 cocktails will bump that up, but I’d happily splash out on a few Aperol Spritz’s or their Pisco sours come pay day.

Good for: Brunch, lunch or dinner after a Portobello stroll.

Visit www.eggbreak.com for more details.

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Louisiana sweet potato pancakes

Makes roughly 8-12 smallish pancakes or I imagine 6 large ones?  Whatever you choose, you get a good yield!

Prep + cooking time = 40 minutes 

• 3/4 pound or 12 oz sweet potatoes (I used one sweet smallish potato that I zapped in the microwave for about 10 minutes – but according to the recipe I should have technically used about 2 small potatoes or 1 large one, which would taste better) 
• 1 1/2 cups or 340g  plain flour 
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt  (I’d recommend cutting this down to 1/2 a teaspoon)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I didn’t have ground nutmeg in my cupboard so I used mixed spice as an alternative)
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups milk (I used almond milk) 
• 1/4 cup or 4 tbsps butter, melted (alternatively you can use an oil like coconut or vegetable) 

Directions

1. Place sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan of boiling water (or zap it in the microwave)  and cook until tender but firm, about 15 minutes. Drain, and immediately immerse in cold water to loosen skins. Drain, remove skins, chop and mash
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg or mixed spice. Mix mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk and butter in a separate medium bowl. Blend sweet potato mixture into the flour mixture to form a batter.
3. Preheat a lightly greased griddle  or fry pan over medium heat. Drop batter mixture onto the prepared griddle by heaping large spoonfuls and cook until golden brown, turning once with a spatula when the surface begins to bubble.
4. Keep cooked pancakes warm by putting them on a baking tray (with baking paper) in the oven on 100-150 C.  When all the pancakes are cooked, serve with toppings of your choice. 

Papaya smoothie: You know, I never bought a papaya in my life (!) until I came across this recipe from the Hemsley cookbook. I tweaked it a tad using a whole papaya, 1 banana, lime juice (I used lemon) a little bit of ginger , roughly 200 ml water and honey to taste). Blend it and bam! Trés dope.

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It’s quite a  full-on meal for 9am, as you get dirty rice topped with a generous burger patty (cooked to your liking), cheese, jalapeño peppers before it’s all doused in gravy, but it’s pretty darn good – and curbed the hunger pangs for a good part of the day. You’ll find Loco Moco under “The Blue Plates” on The Diner menu, but for more info about its history, visit www.whatscookingamerica.net/History/LocoMocoHistory

 Check out more of our pics from The Diner on our Tumblr…

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Here, you’ll find a breakfast menu that is modest and relatively inexpensive considering the generous portion sizes, so other honourable mentions include the avocado on toast with a poached egg, sides such as the buttery mushrooms (£3) and hash browns (much crunchier than expected, but went down well with the fondue) and the Berry Boost smoothie, which was light and refreshing (£4).

But we were much too full to go in on the Electric Donuts, with flavours as varied as maple bourbon and bergamot orange, but it’s given us a reason to return – especially on the weekend when we wouldn’t mind a place to escape from Portobello’s infamous hustle and bustle.

Electric Diner
191 Portobello Road,
London, W11 2ED (££)

For more info, visit www.electricdiner.com. Click here to see more pics of our breakfast!

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Price: £££££

For more information, visit www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com

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