Sunny side up in Ponsonby

What makes a great B&B style breakfast? ALAN TITCHALL set out to find out.

One of those B’s in B&B stands for breakfast, a point not missed by the hosts in this owner-operated hospitality sector who are obliged to get up at sparrow’s fart to prepare and deliver this promise.

So what makes an ideal breakfast? It’s a question we put to the Great Ponsonby B&B, recently re-branded to the Great Ponsonby Art Hotel to reflect the owners’ art collection. The 13-room Victorian villa with garden apartments is located just 300 metres from Ponsonby Road in Auckland, arguably the best breakfasting street in New Zealand.

Despite the gourmet competition this guest house has enjoyed an international reputation for its breakfast, since opening in 1996, that other B&Bs should take note of.

“It has no air-conditioning, no reception, no pool and you won’t get a chocolate on your pillow at night, but it puts on a very mean breakfast,” says a guest comment.

It is breakfast time at the GPAH on Sunday morning. Keir Robertson is deftly juggling an order of eggs on the grill and slow-roasted tomatoes in the stove. Owner Sally James is playing waitress while partner Gerard Hill is sharing a pot of coffee and his breakfast secrets with me. That’s in between his repartee with guests as they file in for breakfast.

A young Englishman interrupts to ask about the guest bikes. He’s warned of Ponsonby’s hilly terrain. Turns out he’s an experienced cyclist.

The rest of the breakfast guests are what you call an eclectic -market makeup - from France, the UK, Australia and a handful of Kiwis from the hospitality trade in town for a food show. Menus are provided in different languages. The kitchen staff are eclectic as well, belonging to the multi-task school of hospitality.

Everyone is kitchen-capable, holds some sort of culinary qualification and take turns on the stove. Gerard Hill spent his early years at sea as a chief steward.

Breakfast is mostly non-profitable, he says straight up. It’s a service that is there to secure occupancy.

A blackboard menu with proven dishes is a guide – guests get anything they want. Gerald says he has become good at looking ahead at the guest list and second guessing breakfast requests. Europeans like meat and cheeses, corporate blokes from the South Island like their oat porridge. Everyone loves crumpets.

Cultural prejudices are interesting. The American market went through an egg white omelette craze a few years ago after yolks were (falsely) linked to high cholesterol. “The omelette looked hideous, but actually tasted OK,” says Sally James.

The English are singled out for a peculiar breakfast crime. “HP sauce over everything,” says Hill screwing up his nose. “Even over their salmon and scrambled eggs!”

During the Lion’s rugby tour, two years ago, the kitchen went through four bottles of the sticky brown stuff within a week. “Normally a bottle will last six months.”

Recipes are flexible and details are left to the cook. James likes to use a dash of porcini oil in her eggs; Hill is fond of tossing in a few capers.

Keir adds a slug of booze to some dishes - beer to lighten the crepes and Grand Marnier to his scrambled eggs. He sees my eyes widen. “Well, they don’t come here to behave themselves,” he says.

“The staff can do anything they like in the kitchen as long as the standard is right,” says Hill. “The menu is not prescribed because our guests are not prescribed.”

There’s dissention over the most popular item on the blackboard menu. It’s a toss up between the ‘bacon and eggs with roasted tomatoes and wee sausages’ and Gerard’s ‘blue cheese and spring onion omelette’, which apparently the Dutch go crazy for.

Time to sample. Sally James gets the job of cooking my scrambled eggs with toast. I’m a big fan of the Bill Granger school of egg cooking. He runs Bills in Sydney, a Mecca for breakfast afficianados.

Crowned the ‘egg master’ by food critics his scrambled eggs contradict most cook books by using a third of a cup of cream with every two-egg serving. The seasoned mixture is cooked quickly in a non-stick pan using the ‘folding’ method.

Sally doesn’t use cream – but uses the same technique of gently pushing and folding (never scrambling) the egg mix from the sides of the pan to the center, creating fluffly little curds of gently cooked eggs. My breakfast is served outside on a sunny winter morning with the weekend newspaper – very Ponsonby.

So, the secret to an ideal B&B breakfast? Be preapred to be ‘taste’ flexible, offer plenty of free range egg dishes, add a slug of booze here and there, train all staff to handle kitchen duties and, very important, make sure your guests don’t behave themselves.

Sally James and Gerard Hill enjoy the eclectic range of guests at their Ponsonby B&B.