English Breakfast "Lite" (and more) at The Green Grocers

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A Snack Attack Journey

Full English Breakfast, a 700-year-old tradition

The Low Down on the Fry Up

From primary through grammar school, the Chef’s mum cooked him and his brother full English breakfasts each morning. This consisted of fried bread, fried eggs, fried bacon or sausage, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms. And you wondered why the traditional English breakfast was called a “Fry up!”?

The full English Breakfast has been a “thing” since the 1300s. Instituted by the landed gentry to show hospitality, the tradition was continued by well-heeled Victorians, to show off their wealth, but then the breakfast became standardized fare for the middle classes, the fuel for the demanding work of industrialization. By the 1950s, the fry up had been taken up as a morning staple by the English working class (Note, you can find entire histories and explications of each item on the plate, from back bacon to blood pudding to stewed or fried tomatoes at The English Breakfast Society) .

I well remember first encountering the English breakfast in the drab dining rooms of small hotels in Cornwall, Oxford and York, when I traveled alone during my summer study abroad program in London (read more of my memories of that time here): the thick slices of “back bacon,” the superior sausages, fried eggs with their frilled egg white petticoats edged with the rust color of Heinz baked beans, slices of white toast absurdly cooling in the toast rack. I dug in with gusto, and, for the baked beans or items like blood pudding, I felt a little (dis)gusto! And—much appreciated—on a student’s budget, the breakfasts held me over until dinner time.

Thanks to chefs and food writers like Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, and Nigel Slater, England is no longer renowned for overcooked vegetables and boring roasts. Yet, while the England food scene is constantly evolving, the full English breakfast doesn’t change. What’s changed is that the Chef and I no longer have the hollow legs we sported in our youth. When we stayed at the Hotel Katherine during our overnight in the seaside town of Lowestoft we had an option for the full fry up or a continental breakfast. Because we thought we’d be lunching at a “chippy",” we decided to split one English breakfast, because everything comes in twos. Yet, eating my granola and half an English breakfast made me uncomfortably stuffed, and we couldn’t even stomach the thought of giant battered chunks of cod or haddock filets on top of soggy chips come lunchtime! 😭

English Breakfast “Lite,” the Perfect Norfolk Sandwich and Pleasin’ Pizzas

So what a relief it was to come across the “Norwich Breakfast” at The Green Grocers, our local community cafe and organic health food store. The Chef and I went up one morning to have coffee on the rickety tables out front, but then we saw that for £5* we could each get what I’ve dubbed English Breakfast Lite. See the photo above, and compare it to the debauchery of the Full English Breakfast pictured in the headliner photo for this post! While The Green Grocers also offers full fry ups, like the £11 East Anglian (2 sausages, 2 bacon, 2 egg, black pudding, bubble & squeak,** field mushrooms, tomato and toast), the Norwich Breakfast allowed us to have our bacon and fry it, too! Each single item was cooked to perfection. The only thing: afterwards, we wanted yet another slice of bacon, another egg. We debated splitting another Norwich Breakfast but decided to restrain ourselves! But we didn’t restrain ourselves from having one of The Green Grocers’ delectable pastries, in this case one with an apricot quivering in the middle like the deep orangey-yellow yolk from one of the GG’s organic eggs.

I want to take a moment to sing a paean to The Green Grocers. Like most earnest organic/health food purveyors, it has the characteristic aroma of oats and grains mingled with the minty scent of homemade soaps and vats of Faith in Nature body wash refills. However, far from purist, it offers extremely carnivorous offerings (pizzas topped with Wagu beef or boar sausage) alongside vegan sausages and GF baked goodies. And for the same £5 you spend on a Norwich breakfast you can get a “Norfolk Dapple Sandwich” on your choice of GG bread (I love their sourdoughs). Norfolk dapple is the most popular cheese sold by Norfolk Cheese Company. This mild cheddar, redo produced by Ferndale Farm in Little Barningham, Norfolk, is redolent of green meadows and content cows. It’s made of fresh raw milk from cows who graze the land surrounding the 11th century priory in Binham. Quite the provenance, that! The Dapple plus fresh, springy but soft “little gem” lettuce leaves, uber-tasty vine-ripened tomatoes, English cucumber slices (da best!), all slathered in a healthy gob of mayonnaise add up to make this a “PERFECT SANDWICH.”

And we also ate dinner at The Green Grocers during one of their pizza evenings (Thurs-Sunday). First, let me just say that the bill for a shareable antipasti plate, two LARGE 12” individual pizzas, three 175ml (FULL) glasses of red wine, two dishes of local Lakenham Creamery ice cream (two scoops each) and an espresso came to £38, which works out to $48. Dinner for two! The antipasti was a meager £4.50 but hardly meager with enough prosciutto, olives, artichoke hearts and sopressota for two. The roasted cauliflower with Indian spices was a surprise, but just showcases the quirkiness of The Green Grocers. We ordered a plain Margherita pizza (£7) and one with rocket and Serrano ham (£8 + £1 for the addition of field mushrooms). These were the puffy crusted floppy type of pizzas you eat folded over to keep the buffalo mozz from sliding off, not the rigid thin crusted ones the Chef bakes. We scarfed them down with £5 big (175 ml) glasses of the Chilean house red. I asked for two pieces to go, something I’ve learned British people are loath to do (especially older Brits; it really floors me how a generation that saw 14 years of food rationing is happy to throw food away! I’ve asked for many doggy bags under my mum-in-law’s disapproving eyes, but that’s another topic!).

Two scoops @$3.60…salted caramel and chocolate shown here, from Lakenham Creamery

I didn’t want to finish the whole pie because I wanted room for two scoops of local ice cream (£1.50/scoop) from Lakenham Creamery. When I think of the artisanal $6.00/scoop ice creams of NYC, I have to say they don’t hold a candle to Lakenham’s because the foundation—British cream—is superior. As I’ve said before, the Brits do dairy right! And Lakenham has a proud family history. Started as Aldous Ices by Christmas Aldous in 1921, the company celebrated its 100th birthday last year, and while Lakenham bought the company in the 1990s, the recipe is the same one Christmas Alduous used. My mum-in-law said it was a real treat when her mother took her into the city for a scoop of Adous' Ices.

Now I’m home in New York City, and feeling betwixt and between. Happy to be in our own apartment and sleep in my own bed and not fuss with the lock boxes of AirBnBs but sad that the places I felt at home in Norwich are now out of reach in space and time. It may be 10:00 AM here, but it’s already 3:00 PM in Norwich, and the Green Grocers cafe has stopped serving food. The bread baskets are empty. And the blackbirds, which sing incessantly in the morning and in the evening, are having their afternoon naps. I’m remembering the conversation we had with the handsome black-haired waiter (with bulging biceps) during our pizza dinner. We were telling him we are from New York City, and he ended up revealing that he’d done a modeling stint in New York several years back. He looked wistful and told us he’d like to go back to New York City with his girlfriend one day. I’m sure he will. I’m learning it’s possible to store one’s heart in two places.

*At the time of this writing the English pound is worth $1.23. See estimated dollar prices for The Green Grocers in the photo captions.

**While Bubble & Squeak sound like the name of a cartoon gangster duo, it is the true peasant dish: fried shredded cabbage and mashed potatoes.

The Green Grocers
2-4 Earlham House (on Earlham Road near Recreation Road)
Phone: +44 1603 250000