Blog of the Week: Symmetrical Breakfasts of Michael Zee

The first photograph in the blog appeared on August 30, 2013 when Michael Zee, a museum employee, made breakfast for his boyfriend, fashion designer Mark van Beek. When he laid it out (an omelette, avocado, salami and fruit juice), he noticed it was perfectly symmetrical. He took a photo and posted it on Instagram and soon attracted an avalanche of likes and comments. Today, the Symmetry Breakfast blog has over 400 images and 113,000 subscribers.

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“I get up really, really early,” Zee says. “If something takes more than 30 minutes to make, such as a sourdough, I do it the night before. I post at 7.30 a.m. and we leave the house at 8 a.m. Usually, within the first hour, I’ll have 1,000 likes and by the next day it will go up to about 3,000,” Michael told The Guardian. He admits to making some breakfasts ahead of time if he’s anticipating a hangover. So far he hasn’t missed a day in a year. Contents of the plates change from day to day, but coffee and orange juice remain. “People wonder if I’m crazy or obsessive,” Zee says, “but it is a declaration of love, really. I’m dedicated – both to breakfast and to Mark.”

In order to find inspiration, Michael researches global breakfast traditions. He has already cooked a Spanish frittata, French croissants, scandinavian salads, Indian sweets and fried rösti, and Vietnamese buns. All the food is served on really nice plates, with beautiful tabletops as backgrounds. The blogger always mentions cutlery and kitchenware producers, as well as food retailers in the pipeline but hasn’t started to charge for product placement – not yet. Michael says he is trying to support small business, even though quite a few really big brands like Nespresso and BirdsEye have tried to approach him.

In the future the couple envisages hosting gastronomy events and making a cookery book.

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