Syrian breakfasts (as served by every hotel we stayed in) look kind of like Turkish breakfasts. But there the resemblance ends.

Where Turkish breakfasts offer fresh food like tomato, lettuce and cheese, Syrian breakfasts have a stronger emphasis on things that came out cans / jars/ aluminium foil. There’s reasonably fresh pitta bread, and a boiled egg, sure, but the huge plate of jam you’re usually served tastes like it came out of a ten litre tin, fresh cheese is unheard of, the yoghurt is often salty, and I couldn’t bring myself to try the olives.

There were only two exceptions to the breakfast wasteleand. In Damascus we blew off our hotel and ate at the Star-Crossed Lovers Cafe. Cunningly, the cafe had chosen to go for quality not quantity, so instead of huge plates of inedible jam we recieved smaller servings of fresh hummus, delicious cheese and jam, bread and olives. Best of all, they had MILO!

After a tip-off from Anth and Andrew, we sought out a traditional Syrian breakfast in Aleppo. A very sweet, hot semolina pudding is served with stringy, salty cheese and fresh pitta bread. You add the cheese to the pudding, then scoop it all up with pitta bread. Well, that’s the theory. In reality, the pudding is very slippery and I had to cheat and use a spoon to save embarrassment and a huge mess.

I’m in two minds about this dish. At first the pudding was delicious, and the contrast between the salty cheese and very sweet pudding was interesting. But after awhile, my tastebuds started to get overwhelmed by the strong flavours, particularly in the relatively early hours of the morning. Still, it beat the regular hotel food hands down.

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