The Full Irish

In the UK and Ireland there are breakfasts known as the full Irish, or full British. These are intended to make certain you are not hungry again for a decade or two. Are they balanced meals? HAHAHA. No. Is your daily amount of carbs and fat ingested in one sitting? Oh yeah. Are they tasty? Most definitely, with one exception, and I’ll get to that.

I have had a full British many years ago, so I did have inkling of what they were like. And I knew that the one I had was middling, at best. My husband had a full Irish a few years ago in Dublin, knowing it might not be a good example, and his concerns were justified. So, we were both interested in trying it out again.

The first try was at Marguerite’s, Newcastle West’s bakery. Everything else that we have had here has been excellent so we had high hopes.

Yep, came with chips. Of course. The little round discs are white and black pudding, more below on those.

There are always eggs, sausage, bacon, usually black and white puddings and toast of some kind. This particular one had hash browns as well (plus chips). The bacon, sausage and egg were excellent, hash brown was tasty. The black and white puddings were the subject of discussion. A pudding of this style means that it is boiled or steamed as a cooking method. Before serving it is sliced and fried in some way. White pudding may or may not have some pork liver in it. If this one did it was well hidden by the spices. It was quite tasty – and I do not consider myself to be an adventurous eater. I made the husband try it first. Black pudding is another subject entirely. It has similar ingredients as white pudding, with the all important addition of blood. Yep. It doesn’t look or smell any different than the white pudding but I just couldn’t do it. Nope. The husband took a bite. He’s not nearly as picky as I am, but he was less than impressed. Overall we were pleased with this experience.

The next example came from the Brown Morel, also in Newcastle (or NCW, as the locals call it). The atmosphere in this restaurant was nice! I loved it. It’s a little bit upscale but not pricey.

An elegant offering. Note the absence of black pudding. That was intentional.

First of all, this was ordered without black pudding, and had the classic addition of baked beans, mushrooms and grilled tomato. This one was outstanding! Note the intense color of the eggs. These are not eggs from some mass producer, these are happy chickens. The white pudding here was even better. An enthusiastic YUM is given to this offering.

More to come as we (sometimes) try more traditional food items!

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