My visit to Project Coffee was at first thrown off course by the realisation that their version of the full Scottish breakfast – the so-called “Project Breakfast” – does not include beans. Somehow, in 21 years I had never encountered this, and, as I frowned and craned my neck to get another look at the menu board to check it had not just been a horrible mistake, my dining companion became increasingly exasperated. “Please” she said, “stop.”
Moving past the absent beans, I tried to enjoy this breakfast with an open mind. Overall, Project Coffee offers a decent breakfast – the quality of bacon and sausages was good, the mushrooms “well-seasoned”, in the words of my friend, and there was at least a tomato. In some ways, the beanless nature of this breakfast allowed me to enjoy its other components all the more – the breakfast tomato usually sits sadly on the side of my plate. This time, I enjoyed it, and was pushed pleasantly out of my comfort zone.
In terms of carbohydrate, the Project Breakfast does not disappoint. Its slices of toast are almost an inch thick, and having asked for extra to replace black pudding and haggis, I was given a stack of bread so large I even struggled to finish. The Project Breakfast gains a point for its high quality potato scone, which manages to avoid the manufactured blandness of its supermarket cousin.
The café’s whitewashed brick walls, copper-topped tables and artfully aged furniture make it a lovely, if unoriginal and slightly cramped, place to eat your body weight in breakfast food.
In the £7 region, this breakfast is a slightly pricy start to the day, but for a Bruntsfield brunch, that is probably unsurprising. Project Breakfast is right, and my journey to complete this one was as satisfying as it was unsettling. I do not usually expect personal growth with my breakfasts, but this time I was pleasantly surprised.
[Image: TheOnlyJamie @ Tripadvisor]
