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BEANS! My last post didn't really capture the true bloody awfulness of breakfast beans. Not the way Terry Gilliam does. I like baked beans, don't get me wrong, even the canned ones from Bush's. Especially the canned ones from Bush's. But what passes over here for what we can get over there is, overall, quite underwhelming. Overwhelmingly so. So it is with great pleasure that I can announce I've found breakfast beans worth trying.

I say worth trying because I haven't actually done so yet. They certainly looked good. And homemade. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

One of my work colleagues has been in town from the states the last couple weeks. We went to breakfast at The Breakfast Club near Liverpool Street the day after he flew in. There's another one over in Soho, but the queue at that one has been horrendous the couple of times I've walked by. I was a little disappointed the place didn't look like a gymnasium that had been hastily converted into a library, and also that Molly Ringwald wasn't anywhere to be seen. So much for nostalgia.

After last season's hullaballoo about horse meat ending up in the beef here in the UK, a number of enterprising establishments have started offering 100% horsemeat burgers (untainted by beef!) in the London area, including my old standby for exotic meats.

Just try to read that title without getting a Garth Brooks song stuck in your head. A friend of mine suggested we try Banner's in Crouch End for breakfast last weekend. She'd been there before, and highly recommended it. I'd never tried ackee before, but I'll be having it again.

As I've documented previously, I'm always on the lookout for a good breakfast diner. I tried Mess Cafe this morning, and while it didn't quite live up to expectations, it certainly fits the description. Also in this update, Kopapa and a return to Caravan!

Spend two weeks visiting any place for work and you'll end up hitting quite a few restaurants. This was absolutely the case on our trip back to Austin. Fortunately, it's a town I'm very familiar with, having lived there for more than a decade. Unfortunately, two weeks isn't enough time to hit all the old haunts.

You know how the saying goes, "if it's too loud..." Apparently it's time to trade in my bicycle for a walker and stock up on Depends and viagra. We went to try out the Meat Market's bigger sister last night. I think, on the face of things, we'll be sticking to the younger, friendlier restaurant. Insert awkward comparison between Meat Market/Meat Liquor and Bianca/Kate from The Taming of the Shrew.

So I'm participating in the 50 burgers challenge. I'm not off to a good start. I should have started with the burger I ordered from the Orange Bull Pub (pictured above), but we went on New Year's Eve, before the challenge started. That double-decker burger was awesome. I'll have to go back so I can get it counted. Once the challenge is over, I may do a retrospective here.

Although I can certainly understand why they spelled it the way they did. I've spent the last decade+ in and around Austin, TX, and while there's some local mangling of place names (I'm looking at you, Manchaca and Guadalupe -- seriously, I don't even speak Spanish, and I know the vowels at the end of those words aren't silent. And don't get me started on 'Burnet'), most of the populace is used to seeing Spanish signage. The city's only a few hundred miles from the border and there's a significan hispanic population - mostly Mexican, but there are quite a few from the Caribbean islands and elsewhere in central and south America. So when we see "Cantina Jalisco" on the side of a building, we know how to pronounce the "J." Not so here in the UK, where I shudder to think what the locals would do with "Oaxaca." So I can totally forgive Wahaca for going with a more anglified spelling, especially since their food is so authentically good.

Becca came up to the office for lunch today, and we walked down to Borough Market. I know I've written about this place before, but there's always something new going on, so I don't feel bad about a repeat.

We started by splitting our old standby, the grilled cheese sandwich. It never gets old. Not much else to say about this except try one!