Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Filling my plate at the Ananti Hilton’s breakfast buffet in Busan, I found myself humming “Breakfast in America” by Supertramp. The song is the fourth track on the Supertramp album of the same name, Breakfast in America. I’ve been a Supertramp fan since the days of my youth. “Breakfast in America” was released in 1979 and was written by Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson. It was not a huge hit in the States, but it was a top ten in the U.K. The song is actually not about breakfast at all, but rather a young man from the U.K. and his dream to one day visit America as he also laments his girlfriend. Which leads me to why I was humming the song this morning. The desire to visit America and have a classic diner breakfast. 

I miss sitting down to a good ‘ol American breakfast. A nice cup of hot tea (Earl Grey with milk), bacon just turned crisp, scrambled eggs (moist, but not runny), toast with butter and jam (black raspberry, raspberry, or strawberry)…my mouth is watering!

In Asia, breakfast out can be a crap shoot as you can never be completely sure what will be available. Liquid scrambled eggs best eaten with a straw. Bread that is either larger than the revered Texas Toast or small, hard rolls that resemble bread but sadly are not. And sometimes bread for toast is non-existent and replaced with steaming white rice. White rice is great for an evening dinner of stir fry, but it is just not breakfast material. Bacon that spent a mere thirty seconds over the fire that hangs limp in grease. Sausages that resemble those tubes that snake bite kits used to come in or a plump big toe recently separated from an arthritic elderly person.  

Today there was bacon, which was surprisingly good, sausages, and braised short ribs. Yes, braised short ribs. Not for breakfast.  The pan of scrambled eggs were yellow lumps swimming in yellow liquid, so I asked the young Korean woman at the omelet station to cook me two fresh scrambled eggs. I had to ask her twice to keep them on the fire a bit longer as I did not have a straw. She complied with a smile each time and my eggs were eventually quite fresh and tasty. There was also a seafood bar and a special menu of grilled abalone…no thanks. Not for breakfast. And as usual there were all manner of fruits and yogurt available (always yummy) along with the ever present salad bar… not for breakfast. I’ll pass.

I sat and drank my tea, talked with my wife, and gazed east out at the ocean toward the shores of America knowing that someone somewhere out there was snarfing down a Denny’ s Grand Slam Breakfast in America!

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