The Lobster Dance

I was watching a travel show  in early September and saw a feature on モーニングサービス　(mouninugu saabisu), or “morning service.” The show explained that if you order just a coffee in most coffee shops in Nagoya between 6 and 11 am, you will receive food with it for free–a regional breakfast special!* So, of course, モーニング got put on my list of things to eat in Nagoya.

Morning for three, please!

According to this show and to my Nagoya-based friends, Nagoya’s history of cloth manufacture and trade meant that merchants were up early in the morning and often needed a quick meal before the morning markets opened. Some coffee shops started giving its customers some food with their coffee in the 1950s, and the idea took off. A morning service is usually something like bread, an egg, and fruit, though some are more elaborate–food you can eat quickly over the course of a cup of joe.

My friends and I went to Komeda, a Nagoya-based chain coffee shop for our “morning.” We all ordered coffees (I had a Viennese cinnamon cappuccino) for about 350-400 yen, and were asked which モーニング option we would like. The choice was toast or a sandwich, and given Japan’s track record with sandwiches (white bread, no crusts, egg salad in everything), we all opted for the toast. The set came with a half a slice of buttered Texas toast and a hard-boiled egg. Not the most elaborate “morning,” but delicious none the less.

Interestingly, when I returned home, the Donq bakery in the train station in the capital was advertising morning sets: eggs and bacon included with your coffee.   Is Nagoya culture spreading to the north?

Komeda’s website (morning)

List of coffee shops with モーニング at “Nagoya Morning”

Japanese Wikipedia entry on morning service

Notes

*サービス, service; a loan word that means an extra. When I get ice cream at my favorite place, the owner asks  me, in English, “What kind of topping service would you like?” (You get a sample of another flavor on top.) This confused the hell out of me the first few times.