Exploring breakfast

Living in a city exposes you to all sorts of food from different cultures. But I've noticed that generally breakfast is the same at every restaurant. You can get eggs, pancakes, oatmeal, toast, etc. You might venture out and get crepes or corn beef hash, but generally if you are eating out for breakfast you are probably eating an American breakfast (well, I'm not exactly sure of the origins, maybe it's not American, but it has come to be considered as such).

I often wonder what other cultures eat for breakfast. When traveling in Europe, I noticed that often times breakfast consisted of cold cuts, cheese, bread, and yogurt. And when in Hawaii, sometimes they served soba noodles at breakfast. So I know that breakfasts must vary somewhat depending on where you are.

Just a few weeks ago, I got to experience an Arabic breakfast (the restaurant's term, I don't know if it's accurate or not) at one of our favorite local restaurants which just started serving breakfast, Goood Frickin' Chicken (and yes, I know it's weird that a vegetarian would consider a restauranted named Goood Frickin' Chicken to be one of their favorite local restaurants). We ordered the Fool Madamas, which we had also had before at another local restaurant, Joe's 24th Street Cafe, and also ordered a couple other dishes, but I can't remember their names. The food was quite unlike a typical breakfast at any other restaurant. It was delicious, but very heavy and oily, and we were barely able to eat half of it, which left us with some yummy leftovers to take home. We also ordered Turkish coffee, which I believe is a thick coffee mixed with cardamom, which, once I put sugar in it, was pretty good.

I'm definitely curious to try more types of breakfasts. I've never seen a Chinese or Japanese restaurant around here open for breakfast, though certainly there must be one somewhere... and there's tons of breakfast burritos being served in the various Mexican taquerias in town, though I'm not sure if that's a California breakfast or a true Mexican breakfast.