The U S of A: the Land of the Free, where bagels can be found in their multitude, with pop-tarts aplenty and cinnamon rolls left, right and centre, with a divisive side special of Republicanism. A previously ‘great’ country – apparently – hoping to get its mojo back (this sounds more like a classified ad than planned), but if there’s one thing that the States has always been and indeed continues to be pretty darn good at, it’s breakfast.

I have come up with some slightly amended lyrics to ‘America’ from West Side Story in order to discuss America and breakfast:

I like breakfast in America!

Pancakes for me in America!

Waffles with cream in America!

Obesity in America!

The US is depicted as some kind of breakfast utopia, where anything can be sprinkled with icing sugar and eaten with lashings of maple syrup, and portion sizes are always more than you can feasibly consume. It’s sort of as if Americans saw the Full English Breakfast and thought that it wasn’t quite filling enough, and didn’t have enough accessories. It’s sort of unsurprising that 38 per cent of US adults are clinically obese, with a BMI over 30 (according to the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention 2016).

But there’s certainly something to be said for having a little bit of what you fancy every once in a while, so let’s delve into the fluffy wonder that is the American pancake and its glorious plate-fellows.

“You then arrive at hurdle after breakfast hurdle. Doughnuts on a breakfast menu? Pigs and blankets at any time of the year and for breakfast? Monkey bread? Bear claw? Biscuits and gravy?!”

Imagine you walk into a diner. The walls are some kind of pastel shade, the tables are nestled within brightly coloured booths with a sheen that promises to, if you happen to sit there on a hot day, try and keep your lower thighs attached to them forever. The menus are laminated and speckled with the eggy fingerprints of a man who ate an eggs benedict three days ago and dusted with sugar from a child who had a doughnut at 9am yesterday. You pick up the aforementioned menu, opening it and inviting a gentle cascade of sugar onto your lap. But you don’t notice the sugar – all you can think about is what you will choose to eat from this vast list.

A waiter arrives, asks whether you want a cup of joe or glass of OJ. These terms confuse you – those are names, not drinks. You opt for the former, keen to see what or who this joseph will be. Coffee arrives. Slightly underwhelming resolution to the jo mystery.

This does, however, lead you to be uncertain of the meaning of all items on the menu, and rightly so. Your eyes skim over bagels, pancakes and various egg varieties. You then arrive at hurdle after breakfast hurdle. Doughnuts on a breakfast menu? Pigs and blankets at any time of the year and for breakfast? Monkey bread? Bear claw? Biscuits and gravy?! Biscuits and gravy?!! You take a moment to catch your breath, the world is rather different across the Atlantic.

Doughnuts, as The Simpsons has taught you, can be eaten at any time of the day. Pigs and blankets are basically just elements of a normal fry-up in a slightly different structure. But now you’re stuck, you can’t rationalise or explain monkey bread or bear claw, and you can’t even comprehend the combination of biscuits and gravy. You look up and see the same waiter as before asking what you want, you faff around a bit and build up the courage to ask what a bear claw is – fearing that it may be obvious and that you’ll look like a fool, while, under the table, you subtly google what biscuits and gravy are.

Instead of trying these exciting-sounding dishes, you opt for a gargantuan dish of something that you know: waffles, eggs, bacon, pancakes etc. That will inevitably be delicious, but you’re left pondering what those bizarrely named dishes were. These are the trials and tribulations of breakfast in America.

Just to explain: a bear claw is apparently a sweet pastry filled with almond paste and occasionally some raisins. It gets its name from the way in which it is constructed and how it subsequently rises to look a bit like a bear’s claw – so not necessarily so obvious. Monkey bread is yet again a deceivingly exciting name for a pastry. It seems to be a sticky cinnamon cake, and it’s called monkey bread because you’re meant to eat it with your hands. It’s a finger food rather than a genteel afternoon tea cake.

Although I have now researched biscuits and gravy, I still don’t fully understand it. To me, a biscuit is a bourbon, a hobnob, a digestive, and gravy is a liquid that is beautifully coupled with a Yorkshire pudding and a slab of Sunday roast. These are two Venn diagrams that should not cross, but they do in America.

The Cereal Offender: A toast to toast

Across the ocean, biscuits are like scones but a little less sweet, and gravy is a kind of roux combined with sausages and meat fat to add a bit of thickness. This interesting combo came into being during the American Revolutionary War, when rations were low, and so it’s surprising that they have stuck with it now that there’s arguably too much food floating about. Biscuits and gravy are typically found in the South, as demonstrated by the fact that McDonald’s only serves biscuits in the southern regions of the USA. I think this is symptomatic of the fact that, if you haven’t heard about it or if its McDonald’s serving is restricted to only one area, the food probably isn’t all that wonderful. There’s a reason why eggs and bacon are pretty much everywhere, and why you’ve never bitten a ‘biscuit’…

So, there are some niche American breakfast food mysteries solved for you! The overarching conclusion is to stick with what you know: some things are delicious and others just aren’t.

(Other question areas I have for America are: pop tarts. Do people actually eat them?)

The Cereal Box: chocolate Lucky Charms

Continuing with the theme of the week (the USA), this week’s cereal is the Lucky Charm – but of the chocolate variety. I encountered this while on a trip to a cereal café in Paris (called ‘Cerealiste’) with a friend, who happens to be a breakfast enthusiast, general babe and all-round good egg.

The café was in a fashionable area of Paris, and inside there was heavy music, a sofa and TV area where a twelve-year-old and a waiter were playing Grand Theft Auto, a cereal-inspired fashion line and a whole collection of toy figures depicting famous album covers (our favourite being the ABBA one).

In this café, you pay for a small or large bowl and you can have a combination of any cereal, accompanied by any milk (we’re talking skimmed, full, soy, chocolate, almond, you name it!), a topping (?!) and a sauce. It’s like a cereal pick ’n‘ mix – AKA great.

I went for chocolate Lucky Charms and a cinnamon cereal, as I was curious to know what the little pastel bits tasted like. The answer is, unfortunately, not amazing. I can’t tell whether they were a bit stale or whether they just didn’t get enough milk coverage, but they were just not as soft as I had hoped. They were more dolly mix than marshmallow.

The actual cereal bit was nice though, although perhaps a little overshadowed by the Nutella topping I went for (we went a bit overboard). I don’t think I’ll ever buy Lucky Charms as a cereal, but they were fun to try. I would mainly recommend the surreal/cereal experience of this café and of eating cereal for dinner in public