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The 11 Best Cities for People Who Plan a Whole Trip Around Breakfast

I am the kind of person who books flights around where I want to eat eggs. If you're the same, this is your list — the best cities for breakfast, where the morning meal is the headliner and not the warm-up act.

Some people plan trips around museums. I plan mine around breakfast. The best cities for breakfast are the ones where the first meal of the day is an event — a sprawl of little plates, a queue out the door, a thing people get genuinely passionate about. Dinner can take care of itself.

The first time I really got it was in Istanbul, on a friend’s rooftop, when a Turkish kahvalti landed in front of me and just… kept arriving. Cheeses, olives, honey with clotted cream, eggs cooked in a copper pan, simit still warm. It took two hours. We didn’t talk about much. It remains, no exaggeration, one of the best meals of my life.

Here’s where I’d go if breakfast were the only reason.

1. Istanbul, Turkey

The undisputed champ. Kahvalti is a way of life, not a meal. Head to a kahvaltıcı in Beşiktaş or up in Çukurcuma and order the works — for two people it’s maybe 400–500 lira and you will not need to eat again until evening. The menemen (soft eggs with tomato and pepper) is non-negotiable. Tea, not coffee, in the little tulip glasses, refilled until you wave them off.

2. Hong Kong

Dim sum mornings, full stop. Get to an old-school place like Lin Heung (loud, trolleys, chaos) early — by half nine the locals have taken every table and they will not be hurried. Har gow, char siu bao, a pot of pu’er. The whole thing for two runs cheap if you order like a local and don’t over-think it. The clatter is part of the experience.

3. Oaxaca, Mexico

Breakfast here is a religious experience involving a tlayuda, a hot chocolate whisked to a froth, and pan de yema dipped straight in. The markets — go to Mercado 20 de Noviembre — do this best. Cheap, smoky, perfect. I once ate the same breakfast four mornings running and felt nothing but joy.

4. Melbourne, Australia

The city that took brunch too seriously and we are all better for it. Smashed avo is a cliché because Melbourne perfected it. The flat whites are the best on the planet, I’ll fight anyone. Skip the big-name spots with the queues and find a little laneway café in Fitzroy. The coffee snobbery is real but it is earned.

5. Penang, Malaysia

Roti canai at dawn, dipped in dhal, with a teh tarik pulled high and frothy. Or nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaf. George Town’s hawker breakfast is some of the best cheap eating anywhere — a couple of ringgit and you’re set. Go to a kopitiam, point at what the old fellas are having, and you can’t go wrong.

6. Vienna, Austria

A different energy entirely. This is the slow, civilised, newspaper-and-a-melange kind of breakfast in a grand old café — Café Sperl or Diglas, not the touristy one with the queue. A soft-boiled egg in a silver cup, good bread, a coffee that costs more than it should and is worth it for the right to sit there for two hours. Nobody will rush you. Ever.

7. Tokyo, Japan

A traditional Japanese breakfast — grilled fish, rice, miso, pickles, a raw egg over the rice if you’re brave — is a quiet marvel. Many ryokan and a few standalone spots do it. Or go feral and eat a tamago sando from a konbini on a park bench; honestly, the convenience-store egg sandwich is a genuine wonder and I won’t hear otherwise.

8. Tel Aviv, Israel

The Israeli breakfast is its own art form — shakshuka, salads, cheeses, eggs, endless bread, all arriving at once. Sit somewhere near the Carmel Market. It’s enormous and it’s social and it’ll run you a fair bit, but it’s built for sharing and lingering.

9. Lima, Peru

People come for the ceviche and miss the breakfast, which is a mistake. Tamales, a butter-soft pan con chicharrón, fresh juices in colours that don’t seem real. The markets do it best and earliest. Cheap, hearty, and the fruit alone will ruin supermarket fruit for you forever.

10. Marrakech, Morocco

Msemen (flaky square pancakes) with honey and amlou, fresh orange juice squeezed in front of you, mint tea poured from height. Eat it on a rooftop in the medina as the city wakes up and the call to prayer drifts over. It costs almost nothing and it feels like a million dollars.

11. New Orleans, USA

Beignets and chicory coffee, sure, Café du Monde at 7am before the crowds. But the real one is a proper Creole breakfast — grits, andouille, an egg on top. Go to a neighbourhood spot, not the Quarter. The portions are absurd and that, here, is the entire idea.

Go early and go hungry — the best breakfast spots get rammed or run out, and there’s no sadder sight than a sold-out blackboard. Skip your hotel buffet on principle; the real food is always a couple of streets away and a fraction of the price. And give the meal time. A breakfast you eat standing up in eight minutes isn’t the kind I’m talking about.

Plan the trip around the eggs. It’s a perfectly sensible way to live.

Eat where the local grandads eat, get there before nine, and skip the buffet. Breakfast is the meal worth crossing a border for.

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