James Bond’s food
One of the big differences between the James Bond books and the movies is that while 007 is rarely seen eating in the film series (he is, however, well known for drinking), 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 good food served in fancy restaurants, his favorite meal by far is scrambled eggs on 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 007 story in New York.
Bond also finds fine dining quite pretentious at times and Fleming claims that when in England he lives on a diet of grilled sole, casserole eggs and cold roast beef with potato salad; Bond himself claims to prefer ordinary simple country food 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 opinion that we all craved simple, childish meals, and breakfast provided exactly 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 longer exists) brewed in a glass Chemex pot while reading the Times.
He is then served an egg that May, his elderly Scottish maid, has boiled for exactly three and a third minutes, which is served in a dark blue egg cup garnished 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 Minton blue china.
However, when you are abroad, your breakfast may vary. In New York he calls room service to order orange juice, three scrambled eggs with bacon, toast and jam along with a double espresso with cream, hardly a departure from his breakfast at home. But during a mission in Istanbul, he orders a very different breakfast; yogurt and green figs with turkish coffee.
Where we do 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 (as he follows Goldfinger around France), he also eats very well. ; one of the most memorable descriptions of a meal occurs when he dines with M at his club, Blades.
After Riga vodka, Bond orders champagne to accompany his asparagus and hollandaise sauce, lamb chops with buttered peas and new potatoes, and a pineapple slice 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.