Breakfast – Continental, English, what’s the difference?

Many nutrition experts consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. It must be well designed to provide you with nutrients so that your body and brain have everything they need to function at their best.

This is also very important during your holidays, especially those that involve a lot of sightseeing and walking: there is no excuse to skip breakfast! A trip to London will be one of those in which you will be very active and it would not be too smart to start the day without a good breakfast.

When you stay at one of London’s famous B&Bs, you’ll receive breakfast every day; you know for sure that it is included in the price of the room you will pay. But, the B&B owners may be ready to provide you with an English breakfast, which you would probably expect in the UK capital, or they may also serve a continental breakfast. This often happens when a particular B&B has a lot of guests from the US or continental Europe. Many hotels also give their guests the choice, although most of the time you will be able to get an English or Continental breakfast.

Most people can’t tell the difference between those two types of breakfast. The difference between them is big and can have a significant impact on whether or not you start your day full of energy…

Let’s start with the definition of continental breakfast. It is a light breakfast that usually consists of baked goods such as pastries, bagels, toast, bread, croissants, and muffins, coffee, tea, or other liquid (for example, fruit juice, hot chocolate, or milk). It can also include elements such as: fresh fruit, cereals, jam, honey, cream, butter, yogurt, cheese -hard or cream- and sliced ​​sausages.

So it really looks light and is based on the Mediterranean breakfast tradition, but in London it can be served in a slightly ‘heavier’ version: it can include bacon, eggs, toast and roasted tomato.

A typical English breakfast is a large and substantial meal, usually consisting of eggs (fried, poached or scrambled), ham or other meat (most often sausages), fish (herring), cereals, baked goods (toast or bread with butter), jam, baked beans, fried mushrooms, tea or coffee, and condiments (eg, tomato sauce, but HP sauce is the most popular).

If your breakfast included all of that, it would deserve another popular name: “full English breakfast.” The full English breakfast is one of the oldest British traditions, but due to health concerns (too much oil and fat!) it is not served very often during the week. However, it is still eaten on Saturday and Sunday mornings, while breakfast during the week is much simpler. And if that full English breakfast includes everything mentioned above (sometimes even more, like black pudding and leftover meat, vegetables and potatoes from the previous day’s meals), then it’s called a “Full Monty”. That name is used by patriotic Englishmen to honor Field Marshal Montgomery, a World War II hero.

If your hotel doesn’t serve English breakfast, but you’d like to try it, you can easily find it in one of London’s traditional all-day breakfast cafes. Such places are often called “cafes” or “greasy spoons” and serve the full English breakfast as “all day breakfast”.

Enjoy!