The project started in Tokyo, badly: a phone photo of a kissaten morning set, toast the thickness of a paperback, egg, coffee, a little salad for reasons. I posted it with the caption 'breakfast in a city I don't live in' and it stuck, and for seven years I kept the rule. Home didn't count.
Then this morning at Fábrica, flat white, pastel, the counter by the window, I opened the app to type 'breakfast #212 in a city I don't live in' and stopped. I've lived in Lisbon for three years. I have a cat that isn't mine and a bakery that is.
So: breakfast #1. Same pastel as always. Same window. A city that stopped being somewhere I was visiting at some point when I wasn't looking, which is how it always happens, which is the point.
The count restarts. Osaka will be #2 in December. Duarte says it's cheating. Duarte is from Braga and has never once left it in his heart, so he doesn't get a vote.
