Sadly, and probably because we inherited our tourism industry from the visiting English in the 1970s, who were intrepid enough to visit the branches of their familes who had come here a generation or two earlier, the accepted norm for breakfast in our B&B’s is “Continental” or “Hot English”
The Continental part is anything uncooked – including Cocopops and tinned fruit, and the Hot English can include boerewors and sweetcorn – neither of which have ever, to my knowledge, graced an English Breakfast table - anymore than the Continentals would be seen dead eating Cocopops or tinned guavas.
My job has me eating in lots and lots of different B&Bs, Guest houses, Lodges and Country Houses and each time I am offered any of the above, I applaud those people with the strength and determination to offer their guests a South African experience instead of a watered down and badly interpreted version of either English or Continental.
I still cringe at the thought of the day I was asked to give my opinion on the “croy’s aunts” or the “moffins” offered to me in a Little Karoo town where local cheese and home baked bread would have been a wonderful treat. I gasp in horror at the boxed orange juice offered for breakfast in one of the great deciduous fruit regions of the world. I blush with embarrassment at the Wensleydale cheese and Danish blue served in areas where world class cheeses are being produced just a few miles away. I am gob smacked by the tiny impenetrable triangles of long-life milk on the tea tray of a farm house with fabulous fat dairy cattle munching outside the window….
Come on people – be brave! Don’t go on producing what you think the “right thing” is – break out – serve what your Afrikaans granny may have offered – wonderful fig preserves and stewed fruit with cinnamon! Or invent some South African egg dishes that would be unique to your kitchen – bake your own bread – and Yes! Bake your own muffins and stop expecting your visitors to eat those awful little plastic cup cakes in frilly paper skirts that pass for “moffins” in our supermarkets. Buy even just a little fresh fruit and stop trying to impress with canned peaches and guavas..
Make it your own – make it real – make it fresh. It is the last thing your guests have of your house - and it does not matter how good your beds are if the breakfast is boring – because they will forget you, your house and your great beds if they don’t remember the best South African breakfast they have ever eaten.
