Breakfast has become far too well behaved.

Porridge. Granola. Sourdough. Something involving avocado and seeds.

All perfectly respectable.

Then you look at The Chalkboard's menu and discover churros have entered the conversation.

Now we're interested.

Because sometimes breakfast isn't about making the decision your fitness app would applaud.

Sometimes you've got a free morning, you're meeting somebody you haven't seen for ages and a sad piece of toast at home simply isn't going to cut it.

The Chalkboard understands this.

This isn't a coffee-and-croissant operation

There are breakfasts that exist mainly to accompany coffee.

This isn't one of them.

The Chalkboard has built a reputation around brunch and the more indulgent end of breakfast the sort of food that makes you reconsider the claim you made five minutes earlier that you “weren't actually that hungry.”

Sweet things.

Savoury things.

Things involving eggs.

And yes, churros.

It's the kind of menu where two people can spend longer discussing what to order than it would have taken to eat cereal at home.

Which is rather the point.

Peterborough has got quite good at brunch

There was a time when going out for breakfast locally generally meant choosing between a full English and another full English.

Nothing wrong with that.

A good fry-up remains one of Britain's more convincing contributions to civilisation.

But breakfast has changed.

It's become a reason to meet rather than simply something you eat before doing the interesting part of the day.

That's where somewhere like The Chalkboard earns its place.

A weekday coffee can be functional.

Brunch is social.

Nobody suggests brunch when they've got eleven minutes before the next appointment.

You go because you've actually got time to sit down.

Perhaps that's also why the extravagant bits of the menu suddenly make sense.

Churros at home on a Tuesday morning would raise questions.

Churros while catching up with a friend?

Completely different legal jurisdiction.

The difficult bit is pretending you don't want what they've ordered

This may be the biggest danger of modern brunch.

Presentation matters.

A plate arrives at the next table and everybody notices.

You don't know those people.

You have no legitimate interest in their breakfast.

Yet you're now trying to identify it without staring.

“What's that?”

No idea.

“Should we have ordered that?”

Almost certainly.

This is why ordering something safe can be a tactical error.

If you're going somewhere specifically because it does breakfast differently, ordering the thing you could have made at home rather defeats the exercise.

Go hungry.

Look properly at the menu.

And if breakfast somehow ends with churros, there are considerably worse mistakes to make before lunchtime.