Breakfast...on a plate

To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day? On the sage advice of W Somerset Maugham, Sybil Kapoor celebrates some of the best ways to start the day, from bubble and squeak to honey-cured bacon

On Monday, city gents will tuck into their Ten Deadly Sins breakfast at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. While they savour their coffee, steaming porridge, crisp Norfolk bacon, fried bread, calves' liver, bubble and squeak, tomato, fried egg, black pudding, et al, others could be girding their loins to mark the beginning of Farmhouse Breakfast Week. From Monday, for seven days, the aim is to highlight regional breakfast specialities like Cumberland sausage or Lincolnshire plum bread. Organised by the Home-Grown Cereals Authority, it is a cunning ploy to promote cereal consumption, since even egg-laying chickens eat corn. But even if it is an improbable stunt, the week is a reminder that breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day – and yet the one most often sacrificed. A quarter of us skip breakfast, yet concentrate less well without it.

For those that indulge in it, as Richard Blade, Master Cook (head chef) at Simpson's-in-the-Strand says: "Breakfast is a very personal matter – people tend to stick to what they know and like. One of our regular customers insists on well-done lamb's kidneys with tinned rather than fresh tomatoes. We considered serving an American-style breakfast with waffles, but it seemed inappropriate." Kedgeree, poached Finnan haddock and grilled fillet steak seem more suitable. Such traditional breakfasts needn't be unhealthy, either. A kipper is a great source of omega 3 fatty acids, which may help reduce the risk of heart disease, and of several vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin B12. A modest cooked breakfast, holding back on the fat (grilled bacon, scrambled egg not fried, easy on the buttered toast) is also packed with B vitamins, and other nutrients.

Woolley Grange hotel in Wiltshire, which specialises in soothing stressed-out parents and their children, finds most appreciate having breakfast – of locally produced, organic bacon and sausages or smoked haddock and eggs – cooked for them. That's even though it's hardly penance to have something healthier, like home-made granola (oats, dried fruit, almonds and honey in crunchy clusters), compotes of dried fruit, yogurt, and cereals. Even the croissants and pastries are baked there.

The range of preferences is covered at Smiths of Smithfield, too. Proprietor and chef John Torode agrees that customers find a cooked breakfast hard to resist: "I think they're going back to the old-style big British breakfast, with huge plates of food," he says. "But it's informal here. You can hang out on the sofas, read the papers, or eat breakfast in the café at any time in the day." Smiths attracts clubbers who may start their day with coffee, cigarettes and a fresh juice (such as his Holmes Place beetroot, carrot, apple, lemon, ginger and celery juice), while many opt for the hangover cure of a bacon and egg sandwich. It's a far cry from the 18th-century breakfast of yellow cucumbers, or a lemon steeped in small beer. But breakfast has always been subject to fashion, from 16th-century dried fruit and barley cooked in a broth to potted shrimps and watercress in the 19th century. Although cured fish has been around since medieval times, what we consider the traditional breakfast is the Victorian version. The 18th-century vogue for hot chocolate or coffee and pastries evolved into the middle-class habit of having toast and tea; a much more modest repast than Pepys' feasts of oysters, neat's tongues, anchovies, wine and ale.

Simpson's-in-the-Strand, 100 Strand, London WC2 (020-7836 9112). Breakfast 7.15-10.15am, Monday to Friday

Smiths of Smithfield, 67-77 Charterhouse Street, London EC1 (020-7236 6666). Downstairs café breakfast 7am-5pm, Monday to Friday; 10.30am-5pm, Saturday and Sunday

Woolley Grange Hotel, Woolley Street, Bradford-on-Avon, Wilts (01225 864705). Breakfast for non-residents on request

Welsh breakfasts

According to James Boswell, in his Journey to the Western Islands (1773), Scotland is the only place where an epicure would wish to breakfast. A man could start with a dram of whisky before following it with tea, coffee, butter, and the revolutionary new accompaniment to oat cakes of honey, conserves and marmalades. However, The Which? Bed & Breakfast Guide 2002 (£14.99, Which? Books) shows how the finest cooking in every region can be sampled over breakfast. One such is Maesyllan Country House Bed & Breakfast, Boncath, Pembrokeshire (01239 841412), which won the Welcome Host of the Year 2001 B&B category for Wales. Here, Mrs Elizabeth Bolderston takes pleasure in offering guests leek-speckled potato cakes, crisp laver bread patties and locally produced bacon, sausages and eggs. Diners can linger over her field mushrooms, cooked in their buttery juices with a hint of lemon thyme and crème fraiche, or sample some local smoked salmon. On Sunday, there is home-made bread (made from the local St Dogmaels flour), Mrs B's marmalade and WI jams, as well as piping hot pancos (a sweet batter griddle cake) spread with salty Welsh butter and local honey, cold baked ham, warm leek and cheese muffins and an array of local cheeses. The only thing Boswell might miss is a dram of whisky.

Cyber brekkie

"People who haven?t had any breakfast are not as exciting as people who have," insists Paul Hartley, co-founder of Breakfastandbrunch.com.

Reinstating the repast has become an obsession for him, and his enthusiasm should warrant a gargantuan breakfast every day. "People think that it takes too long to make a good breakfast, but it?s easy to make a fantastic meal in a few minutes, such as with a few green figs from a jar, a lump of yoghurt and a drizzle of honey," he explains. "These days, a lot of people grab their breakfast on the way to work or later, at around 10, yet they want something quick and healthy. Stuffed croissants, bagels and smoothies may be the breakfast of the future."

When Hartley and his wife Lynda were running the Rat and Parrot café bar in Putney, they decided to open for breakfast. It proved so popular that they searched for recipes, and a passion for the subject developed. "We travelled to places like Vienna to see the first coffee houses, and Read?s Hotel in Madeira, because Winston Churchill had said they had the best breakfast in the world," recalls Paul. The more the Hartleys researched, the more they felt the lack of a breakfast directory. Two years ago, they sold their country inn outside Bath to set up a website for brekkie-addicts. Breakfastand-brunch.com launched last September, filled with recipes, recommended venues for breakfast, and useful suppliers. The number of site visits is doubling each month, and it seems that the French, Germans and Scandinavians are almost as obsessed by breakfast as us.

Blue eggs and ham

John Bradshaw, director of Marchents Hampers of Broadway, is a ham-and-eggs man. His perfect breakfast consists of warm slices of Mike Harmon's Gloucester Old Spot ham, with a few mushrooms and fried eggs. Not any old eggs, but blue, green or pink-shelled Cotswold Legbar eggs from Clarence Court. Finding such foods, however, is not always easy, so Mr Bradshaw introduced a mail-order breakfast hamper of an almost Pickwickian scale. He has put together a selection of artisan breakfast foods from small, mainly British producers: Robson's Craster kippers, Clarence Court eggs, Forman's smoked salmon, Richard Woodall's bacon and Cumberland sausage, black pudding, Mrs Huddleston's marmalade, plus champagne, tea or coffee. Customers select and order (01386 701865 or www.marchents. com) their favourite breakfast foods to be wrapped and dispatched by Parcelforce.

Other mail-order breakfast goodies include fabulous dry-cured, sweet-black-cured and honey-cured bacon from Moreland Foods (01625 548499). Impress guests by telling them their bacon comes from Gloucester Old Spot pigs crossed with Large Whites and is hand-cured. Manx kippers can be ordered from George Devereau & Son, 33 Castle Street, Douglas, Isle of Man (01624 673257). Kippers freeze well.

Fine Lincolnshire plum bread can be ordered from Elizabeth Botham & Sons, 35-39 Skinner Street, Whitby, North Yorkshire (01947 602823, www.botham.co.uk).

Honey fans should contact The Hive, 93 Northcote Road, London, SW11 6PL (020-7924 6233), where they can buy dreamy pots of Linden blossom, Hawthorn, Red Clover or Sweet Chestnut honey, as well as whole (3-5kg) frames of fresh Ling honey. By the time you finish, you won't want lunch. But then, there is tea – another great British institution that the Home-Grown Cereals Authority might consider promoting.