The ultimate breakfast (or lunch) when travelling is a perfect bacon and egg toasted sandwich. It’s also the ultimate test of the quality of a cafe, roadhouse, truckstop, village, or town. If the baconandeggtoastie is no good, then nothing else will be either. A bold premise, but one that has served well.

So what defines a baconandeggtoastie? Sometimes called a toasted sandwich, otherwise a toastie, it is two slices of bread around bacon and egg. It doesn’t have cheese. It can have sauces of various kinds to enhance it, but they shouldn’t dominate. The bacon and egg should be cooked fresh for the toastie. Any other ingredients are to be treated with caution, as they generally downgrade the experience, however all offerings have been tried with an open mind. The toastie can be sealed around the edges or open. The egg can be runny or fully cooked, the bacon cooked to taste.

‘What about bacon and egg rolls?’, I hear you say. Do they qualify? Well, yes. There is however a tendancy for those who create these sometimes-masterpieces to over-elaborate and this is often detrimental. An common example of over-stepping the mark is the strange belief that a savoury filling should be served in a sweet roll. Brioche. A cardinal sin. But more on that later.