Listening Comprehension 4 　　
　　Hello, I’m Amber and you’re listening to BBC learning English.com. In London life today, we sit down to a traditional British breakfast in a smart London restaurant and a ‘greasy-spoon café’! A ‘greasy-spoon café’, or ‘caff’, is the opposite of a smart restaurant!
　　We find out what the traditional British breakfast is made of, and why it is becoming more and more popular, especially in London, to eat breakfast in a café before arriving at the office for a hard day’s work.
　　Now let’s listen to what an American anthropologist, Kaori O’Connor says. According to Kaori O’Connor, strangers to England have a ‘vague vision’, an unclear picture in their minds, of what the traditional British breakfast is – perhaps it’s served from silver dishes on a grand ‘sideboard’. As you listen, try to catch what Kaori lists as the three main ingredients of the great British breakfast.
　　She says ‘It’s a meal that everyone outside of England has heard of, and dreams about, and we don’t know what it is, but when we come here, we want to eat it. And we have some vague vision of, you know, a sideboard with silver dishes and it’s just going to be the most wonderful thing on earth and I got here, and I went to a café and there was the bacon, eggs and chips, and I thought – gosh, is this all there is?!’
　　Did you catch it? Kaori says she went into a London café for breakfast and there it was ‘bacon, eggs and chips’! Bacon is meat from a pig that has been salted and dried, and it is fried for a traditional English breakfast!
　　The eggs are usually fried too, and there is also usually some kind of bread – perhaps fried bread or even, as Kaori saw, chips – fried potatoes!
　　So now let’s go to a smart London restaurant where chef Lawrence Keogh is frying a traditional breakfast! You can hear the sizzling in the background! He explains why he eats breakfast – the egg and bacon are ‘protein’, for example – protein is healthy. ‘it keeps you going all day’. It’s ‘sustenance’, nourishment, healthy food.
　　As you listen, try to catch what he says is a new trend, or fashion in London’s top restaurants.
　　Lawrence Keogh says ‘I think it’s fundamental to the start of the day. If I’ve got a long day at work, I try and eat egg and bacon in the morning because it’s protein – it keeps you going all day. You know really, we do a lot of business meetings as well now in the morning –the place is very busy – and I think you see it across London now, there’s lots more people having business meetings in top restaurants and it’s getting very fashionable to have breakfast.’