Sydney enjoyed a pop-up cereal café this week at Kawa Café in Surry Hills. Melbourne had a pop up Porridge Bar and in London there used to be a café called Cereal Killer Café. Now in London you can create ‘posh porridge’ from a sky garden with incredible views and there's a place in Copenhagen called GRØD, that only serves incredible porridge creations.
But what’s so important about the fact that these metropolitan cities are embracing variations on breakfast in a bowl?
We’re all loving delicious breakfast creations like omelettes (try our Masala Omelette), crumpets and congee, and so we should be. But somewhere along the way some folk, at least, stopped loving breakfast cereal.
Apparently some people decided that eating cereal was too much effort. The New York Times reported that nearly 40 per cent of millennials surveyed in a 2015 report by market research firm Mintel said cereal was "inconvenient" as a breakfast choice because it required cleaning up after consumption.
While it may take you an extra one minute to clean after eating (or three seconds to put in the dishwasher), there are many reasons why cereal can be a great breakfast choice (even if you don't have a porridge bar popping up near you).
There’s so much variety
There’s so much choice. You can have rolled oats one day and then granola the next. You can have sweet, savoury, crunchy or creamy. Try our brown rice larb congee, Thai peanut chia pudding or savoury breakfast sago pilaf. You can even mix it up and have granola bars. They're kinda like cereal's more portable cousin.
You never get bored
You can add whatever you want to cereal. You can add fruit, yoghurt, milk, seeds, nuts, sweetners and sometimes even flower petals. The world is your oyster (or oats-ter) when it comes to cereal additions.
You don’t have to cook
There is nothing wrong with a cooked breakfast. We all love them. But we don’t always have time to make them. When you’re running against the clock in the morning sometimes you just need to be able to pour something into a bowl, eat it and run out the door. (Millenials, you can wash the bowl when you get home). Why not whip up a batch of our maple, cardamon and almond granola so you've got something ready when time's short.
Grains can be good for you
The Australian Dietary Guidelines say you need a wide variety of nutritious foods from five food groups every day. One of those food groups is “grain (cereal) food, mostly wholegrain and/or high cereal fibre varieties”. Of course, some people can't eat wheat, or other grains - if that's you, try our persimmon and walnut rice porridge (if wheat is a problem but rice is okay) or quinoa and chia porridge.
Kids love it too
Sometimes all kids want is a classic bowl of cold cereal with some milk and a spoon.
Alright guys, time to get excited about cereal again. You can go out, if you're near a pop-up cereal or porridge cafe and have someone else pour a bowl of cereal for you. Or you can get creative in the kitchen with a variety of recipes from all over the world and enjoy your own creations. Dirty bowls and all.
