One of the big differences between the James Bond books and the movies is that while 007 is hardly seen eating in the movie series (he is well known for drinking, though), the books often feature exquisitely described meals that they are a highlight of Ian Fleming’s writing. .
However, Bond is not an outright snob, and while he enjoys fine dining served in fancy restaurants, his favorite food by far is scrambled eggs with toast and bacon. He can eat it morning, noon and night, and Fleming went so far as to offer a scrambled egg recipe in his tale 007 in New York.
Bond also finds fine dining sometimes quite pretentious, and Fleming states that when in England he lives on a diet of grilled sole, casseroled eggs, and cold roast beef with potato salad; Bond himself claims to prefer the ordinary plain food of the country when he is abroad.
Bond’s favorite meal of the day is breakfast, which we know because Ian Fleming told us so. It was also Fleming’s favorite mealtime: his view that we all crave simple, childish meals and breakfast provided just that.
While Bond sometimes orders scrambled eggs for breakfast in the books, his routine while in London is fairly simple; he drinks two cups of coffee from De Bry’s on New Oxford Street (sadly no more) brewed in a glass Chemex percolator while reading the Times.
She is then served an egg that May, her elderly Scottish maid, has boiled for exactly three and a third minutes, which is served in a dark blue egg cup adorned with a gold ring on top. The egg comes from French Marans hens and is provided by a friend of May’s. After the egg, you have toast and butter served with Tiptree’s Little Scarlet strawberry jam, Fortnum and Mason’s Norwegian heather honey, and Cooper’s Vintage Oxford jam, all served on blue Minton china.
However, when you are abroad, your breakfast may vary. In New York he calls room service for orange juice, three scrambled eggs with bacon, toast and jam along with a double espresso with cream, which barely varies from his breakfast at home. But while on assignment in Istanbul, he orders a very different breakfast; yogurt and green figs with Turkish coffee.
Where we see evidence that James Bond loves “simple country food” when he lunches on ham sandwiches with lots of mustard (in an English pub) or bread and sausages (while following Goldfinger around France), he also eats very well. ; one of the most memorable descriptions of a meal occurs when he has dinner with M at his club, Blades.
After the Riga vodka, Bond orders champagne to go with his asparagus and hollandaise sauce, lamb chops with butter peas and new potatoes, and a slice of pineapple for dessert. This episode appears in Moonraker, written shortly after rationing ended in the UK, and while it may not seem particularly exotic to modern readers, the books fulfilled the wishes of the reader of the day.