5 fun places to have breakfast in London (updated)

Have you noticed the number of restaurants which have started offering breakfast - and I don’t just mean a full English?

Breakfast seems to have become the new lunch though goodness knows how hard-pressed execs have time to chat over a bacon naan* (see below) before they hit their desks. Maybe they’ve already been there since six and this is their mid-morning break ….

It makes sense of course from a business point of view. Restaurants have to be open to prep lunch so they might as well offer breakfast to cover their overheads. And for customers breakfast is cheaper than lunch and certainly dinner. No alcohol for a start.

I’ve taken to breakfasting with friends regularly so here are five of my current favourites (updated from back in July 2014) together with five more you might enjoy . . .

The Modern Pantry, 47-48 St John’s Square, Clerkenwell

One of the first restaurants to become creative about breakfast, Anna Hansen’s bright, light Modern Pantry offers a dazzling selection of breakfast dishes that’s only slightly less extensive than their weekend brunch. Options range from homemade bircher muesli with roasted pineapple, raspberry compote and toasted seeds (£5.80) to sugar-cured prawn omelette with green chilli, spring onions, coriander and smoked chilli samba (£9.20) - still my favourite though I enjoyed the sweetcorn, feta, green chilli and curry leaf waffle the other day. Breakfast is served from 8-11am. It gets rammed so you need to book

Fischer’s, 50 Marylebone High Street (Marylebone Village)

One of my new favourite breakfast - and frankly any-time-of-day - spots, Fischer’s is the latest opening from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King of The Wolseley, Brasserie Zedel and Delaunay fame. Like The Delaunay it has an Austrian vibe - only even more so - it feels just like one of those grand Viennese cafés. Sadly it doesn’t serve strudel for breakfast - or didn’t when I went - but the Gröstl (£11.25), a robust country-style fry-up of eggs and paprika-spiked potatoes, will make up for it. Pretzels are excellent too. Monday-Sunday 8am-11.30am

Honey & Co, 25a Warren Street (near Great Portland Street tube)

Honey & Co’s tiny restaurant is famously hard to get into - I imagine even more so after the publication of their hugely successful book - but at breakfast you at least stand a chance. I rocked up at 9.30 recently and walked straight in. The dilemma is choosing between healthy middle-eastern options such as flatbread with egg, spinach, yoghurt and pickles (about £7-ish) or cake - if you’re lucky the plum (or cherry), coconut and pistachio cake will be on. Stay all morning and you can justify both. From 8am.

Koya Bar, 50 Frith Street, Soho

If you fancy a Japanese breakfast, Koya Bar (next to the original Koya) is the place to go. It has the Japanese classics like salmon onigiri and miso soup but also, when I last went, clever riffs on classic British offerings such as ‘kedgeree’ (porridge with smoked haddock and poached egg) and English breakfast noodles with egg, bacon and shiitake mushrooms. Sound a bit hard core? Admittedly you need to wake up feeling adventurous but I love the deeply savoury flavours and sitting up at the bar watching the chefs at work. From 8.30am.

The Greek Larder, King's Cross

The Greek Larder sees the welcome return of the talented Theodore Kyriakou whose The Real Greek was one of my favourite restaurants of the early noughties. He now has a new place in uber-trendy Kings Cross, just up the road from the Guardian and round the corner from Grainstore, Caravan and the latest branch of Dishoom (see below) whose bacon naan you shouldn't overlook either. As the name suggests it’s a deli, takeaway and wine shop as well as a restaurant with all kinds of Greek goodies it’s hard to find anywhere else. I went for breakfast and had some delicious baked eggs with pistachio-infused goats cheese, Koulouri (sesame bread) and Greek mountain tea.

1 York Way, London N1C 4AS. Tel: 020 378 02999. Nearest tube: Kings Cross/St Pancras. There's a useful map on the website if you're not familiar with the area.

And 5 others worth trying . . .

Either branch of Dishoom (in Covent Garden or Shoreditch) for their bacon naan roll* (£5.20) - a thing of beauty. Some delicious-sounding new spicy egg dishes too I haven’t tried. 8am-11.30am.

Duck and Waffle, Heron Tower, Bishopsgate (City)

For an early morning breakfast after a late night’s clubbing or, simply for the stunning views - it's on the 40th floor. The signature duck and waffle (£15), never mind the Full Elvis Belgian waffle, is a touch sweet for me. Try the ox cheek benedict (£11) instead. 6am-11am.

Newman Street Tavern, 48 Newman Street (Fitzrovia)

One of those quiet under-the-radar restaurants that never lets you down. The Newman Street Breakfast includes roast suckling pig - great value for £10. Excellent bacon and egg sandwich too made with huge doorsteps of white bread. 7.30-11am.

Quo Vadis, Dean Street (Soho)

Worth going just for the stylish room and beautifully drawn menus (see top of post). Last time I went I had tomatoes on toast with goats curd which doesn’t seem to be on the menu currently. But bacon 'manchets' are. The kind of place to indulge in a kipper. 8am-11am.

Hawksmoor Guildhall, 10 Basinghall Street (City)

Declaration of interest - this is my son Will’s restaurant but if you feel in the mood for steak (or pig’s cheek scrapple) for breakfast - £22 or £8 respectively - washed down with an ‘anti-fogmatic’ cocktail this is the place to go. (Monday-Friday 7am-10am)

Delahunt, Dublin - gorgeous room, classy food

When I asked Twitter - as you do - where to eat in Dublin I was inundated with replies. There is obviously no shortage of good places to eat in the world’s favourite Irish city.

But Delahunt, recommended by my friend Trish Deseine who is currently writing a guide to Irish food, sounded particularly intriguing. A stunning interior, a sophisticated take on moder Irish food and new to the Dublin dining scene which is always a lure for us gastronomic thrillophiles.

And goodness me the building is beautiful. A former offie apparently though it looks more as is if it might have been a pharmacy with a large snug at the back that looks like the dispensary. All imported, I’m guessing, judging from the ‘before’ pictures on Lovin Dublin’s blog.

As we managed to arrive an hour early (my OH having forgotten what time he’d booked) we sat at the bar for a bit until our table became free. A good move actually as we managed to squeeze in a couple of snacks - some deep fried strips of pig’s ear with raisin mustard and curried cod croquettes with ‘taramasalata’. I put that in inverted commas because the tarama appeared to take the form of 3 black blobs and the croquettes didn’t appear to be curried come to that. Delicious though. They can certainly fry which is quite an art as any Spanish chef will tell you.

You don’t really need a starter if you’ve done the snacks but we ordered one anyway in the interests of research, obviously. Some delicately smoked salmon (smoked in house, apparently) with some insanely good dark, sweet, malty Guinness bread and a lovely fresh apple and Bellingham blue cheese salad with chicory and walnut: a well tried and tested combination but perfectly executed. I’d have gone for the tempting sounding braised oxtail with bone marrow and crispy snails if I hadn’t been having a meaty main.

Actually the mains were the highlight of the meal which is unusual. Pheasant had been rolled into a ballotine and served with *sprout shells* (a scattering of individual sprout leaves), a small slab of white pudding and homemade brown sauce. Michelin standard. My OH had a simpler but equally delicious dish of superbly fresh roast hake with crushed Jerusalem artichoke, raisin (the chef obviously likes raisins) and verjus. The accompanying champ, made with floury potatoes and topped with fine slivers of spring onion was one of the best I’ve had.

We had no room for dessert but that didn’t deter us from ordering one and were glad not to have missed a blood orange tart which had the gorgeous wobbly consistency of a creme brulée It would have been lovely with a sweet wine like a Sauternes if we’d thought to order one.

If I’m quibbling the wine list could have been better for this quality of food - both my falernia and spätburgunder tasted a little lean, in the latter case simply too young. A few natural wines wouldn't have gone amiss. And the music - an insistent drum and bass - was curiously inappropriate, better suited to one of the cheaper, more casual restaurants that line Camden street. But loud, slightly naff music seems to be a feature of the Dublin dining scene. Blame The Commitments.

Delahunt is lovely though and should definitely be on your hitlist if you’re visiting the city. Just make sure you book well in advance. It’s hawt.

Delahunt is at 39 Camden Street Lower. Tel: (01) 5984880 and is on Facebook and Twitter @delahuntcamden. Dinner for 2 cost us €123.75 ex service (£91.44 at the time of writing, relatively expensive for Dublin but worth it.)

Shop Eight Food and Wine, Christchurch, New Zealand

It must take guts to open a restaurant in Christchurch. Four years after the devastating earthquake that demolished much of the historic city centre it still looks like a war zone in places with yawning gaps where local landmarks once were.

Why, you wonder, do they not do more to get the country’s second biggest city back on its feet again? Apparently it’s complicated. Records indicate the region is still earthquake prone (not that that’s unusual for New Zealand) and businesses have got used to operating in the suburbs. Bureaucracy moves slowly.

But there were signs on a summer’s evening on my recent trip that the heart is returning to the city: a busy bike mending project, wasteland turned into urban gardens, a group of kids practising their dance moves in a parking lot and, most impressive of all, Shop Eight, a small restaurant in New Regent street, a row of shops that miraculously survived the quake.

The restaurant was set up a year ago by Liz Phelan and chef Alex Davies an Essex lad who moved to New Zealand as a boy and who still retains his accent despite having spent most of his adult life in the country. 95% of the ingredients the restaurant uses are locally sourced, determined by what is available that day. Most are organic, all sustainable.

The short boldly imaginative menu changes every night. The night I was there (as a guest of the North Canterbury winegrowers* whose wines feature on the all-local list), it included a fragrant umami-rich fish soup with gurnard, clams oyster and summer truffles, a tomato salad with smoked mussels and basil, a punchy dish of spring onions and sprouted seeds with a slow cooked egg and chilli oil and a simply stunning main course of hare with red kale, beetroot, plums and red currants that seemed (probably was) designed to go with the local pinot noir.

There was two beautiful hand-made cheeses, a goats cheese and a deeply flavoursome ‘single origin’ washed rind cheese’ from a cow called Isobel (below) made by Biddy Fraser-Davies, a 72 year old cheesemaker from Cwmglyn farm between Wellington and Napier. (You can read about her battle with the authorities here.). And some warm buckwheat and honey madeleines to finish. This is food that you’d be impressed by if you found it in Paris or London, never mind Christchurch.

Shop Eight is a restaurant that keeps the community at the heart of its operations. Everything down to the furniture which was made by Rekindle from reclaimed wood from the quake is thoughtfully sourced.

If you’re in Christchurch don’t avoid the city centre. Go and celebrate its regeneration at Shop Eight

Shop Eight is at 8 New Regent Street, Christchurch and is open from 4pm from Tuesday to Friday and from 2pm on Saturdays. Closed Sundays and Mondays. To book email bookings@shopeight.co.nz or phone 03 390 0199. Its menus during February 2015 will be meat-free. You can keep tabs on them on Twitter and Facebook.

Another restaurant well worth visiting in Christchurch, I’m told, is Roots. I also stayed in a very comfortable luxury B & B out by the university called The Establishment - about 10-15 minutes from the airport.

*I tasted wines at the dinner from Bellbird Spring, Greystone, Mountford, Muddy Water, Pegasus Bay and Tongue in Groove. More on these in due course.

Sea Containers at Mondrian: much more fun than it sounds

I may have been handicapped by knowing the building previously as an office block but even the name Sea Containers at Mondrian has a corporate ring that makes the heart sink.

The food though is far, far better than you’d expect from a hotel restaurant with some original and delicious dishes devised by New York chef Seamus Mullen of Tertulia who has been brought in as a consultant.

We arrived late for lunch by which time the vast dining room was half empty. This is obviously a place used for business lunches by nearby office workers (there’s a 3 course deal at £24)

Our waitress arrived to explain the ‘concept’ which was ‘sharing’ (gah!) but there were enough tempting “seasonally contemplated” dishes to make us over-order.

The first wave was in many ways the best: a cracking kale, apple and pecan salad (recipe here) which would convert any kale-loather and which we liked so much we insisted on keeping to hand for the whole meal; some delicious smoky 'charred eggplant’ with mint labneh and dates (right) and a plate of artfully draped salmon ‘crudo with fennel and dill yoghurt. By the time we’d scoffed that lot we were already full.

We’d dithered over whether to order the smoked and roasted cornfed chicken (below) on the basis that two gals didn’t need to eat a whole chicken but a charred lemon vinaigrette had sold it. We did have it with braised greens and mushrooms rather than chips or mash which made it slightly more virtuous but made more inroads on it than we’d intended. (The slightly bitter lemon vinaigrette is a winner and great with the light Morellino di Scansano we were drinking)

We were less keen on the flatbread with sobrassado, a rather ungenerous pizza with slow cooked egg yolks (bleugh) perched on top but it was the only duff dish of the meal.

We managed - God knows how - to find room for a dessert - well, rude not to really with a pear soufflé for two with an extra shot of poire william on offer. A splendidly posh fine dining pudding you wouldn’t have expected to find in a relatively casual restaurant like this.

Other plusses and minuses: a decent but quite pricey wine by the glass selection (most of the interesting ones about £10-12 a glass but well served at the right temperature in proper glasses). Slightly scatty service. A request for bread totally threw them - and when it finally arrived it looked like the toasted leftovers from breakfast. Flatbread apart, I don’t think they ‘do’ bread*. Slightly annoying background music.

By and large though Sea Containers was much better than I expected in a dramatic room with stunning views overlooking the Thames and St Paul’s. Cosy it ain’t but it’s a great place to eat if you’re staying (by no means true of all hotel restaurants), to take visitors to London, especially at night or even lunch with a greedy girlfriend … If we’d stuck to those 3 first courses and a glass of wine it would only have cost £20-odd a head.

I ate as a guest of Sea Containers at Mondrian. I’m guessing the full bill would have been more like £60 a head if you ate a normal amount of food.

Sea Containers at Mondrian is at 20 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PD. Tel: +44 (0)20 3747 1000. It's open on a Sunday which is useful.

* Borne out by the title of Mullen’s book: Hero Food: How Cooking with Delicious Things Can Make Us Feel Better,”