Try saying "Top o' the morning" on St. Patrick's Day by starting off with a traditional Irish breakfast - no, not your first beer of the day, but the fabled Irish grill.
My friend Fergal, who recently moved back to Dublin after eight years in Chicago, is my authority on everything Irish. I sent him e-mail asking about his breakfast preferences, and he replied that real Irish really do eat Irish breakfasts - they're not a figment of the American imagination, like so many other things said to be from the Emerald Isle. Says Fergal, "You can't beat a nice greasy fry-up. Black and white pud is a must. Definitely no hash browns, though. A standard breakie might be the aforementioned pud, a few fried eggs, rashers (aka 'bacon' stateside), sausages, mushrooms, etc."
As noted, the traditional Irish breakfast is a plate of fried eggs, sausages, rashers, black and white puddings, bangers (sausages), brown bread and optional sides of fried tomatoes, mushrooms and potatoes. There's no mystery about fried eggs and mushrooms, but some of the other standard parts of a traditional Irish breakfast are less familiar to American stomachs. Take pudding, for example, which is nothing like what you mix up from a Jell-o box. Puddings look like fat sausages, but their particular meat and spices give them a distinctive taste and distinguish them from regular sausages. Packed into long rolls, the puddings can be sliced and then grilled, or fried until crisp. Black pudding, which is also known as blood pudding or blood sausage, is pork sausage made with pig's blood (at least when you're talking about real black pudding). White pudding is a similar sausage made without blood.
Puddings are an ancient Irish dish. According to Reay Tannahill, author of "Food in History," blood drinking and eating has been common in most pastoral communities throughout history. Irish peasants, it was noted by a French traveler in seventeenth-century Ireland, "bleed their cows and boil the blood with some of the milk and butter that came from the same beast; and this with a mixture of savoury herbs is one of their most delicious dishes." This preparation was a version of "drisheen," a kind of black pudding still served in County Cork and elsewhere today.
The best rasher is a piece of Shannon Traditional Bacon, one of Ireland's top exports, which is right up there in popularity with McCann's Oatmeal, Baileys Irish Cream, Guinness and Irish whiskey. In contrast to American bacon taken from pork bellies, Shannon bacon is cut from the loin, making it a leaner and more expensive cut of pork. Shannon bacon resembles Canadian bacon, but is cut long with "the streak" of American bacon. It's never cooked hard like our American version. The bacon fat is later used for frying bangers, puddings, tomatoes and assorted vegetables.
One of the best places in Chicago to get a traditional Irish Breakfast is Higher Ground, where they serve a "giant's plate." At first glance, Higher Ground looks like a typical neighborhood coffeehouse, until you notice the huge map of Ireland on the wall, the stack of Irish newspapers on the book shelf and the jar on the condiments table collecting funds for the Omagh bombing victims in Northern Ireland.
Under the influences of its young Irish owners, Higher Ground has become a mecca for local Irish searching for an authentic breakfast. The coffeehouse's huge, traditional breakfast grill is proceeded by a raisin-studded slice of golden soda bread and accompanied by a bottle of "brown sauce," technically known as "Chef Sauce," which is made with vinegar, sugar, apple, orange, tomato and spices, and comes via Dublin from Nestlé, Ireland.
At the Hidden Shamrock, which claims to serve the "best Irish breakfast in town," you get fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, black and white puddings, two basted eggs, sausages, rashers, homemade brown bread and potatoes. The restaurant prides itself on making every Irish breakfast fresh to order, "not cooked two hours ahead of time and put on a hot plate." A spokeswoman for the Hidden Shamrock notes, "We get a lot of people who come in for our Irish breakfast, but usually later in the day, because it's so filling. Americans typically eat it at dinner, while local Irish tend to come in around noon and have an Irish breakfast for lunch."
Traditional Irish breakfasts can also be ordered daily, all day, at fado and the Abbey Pub. Start your day off with the luck of the Irish. Bain taitneamh as do bheile (a little Gaelic for bon appetit).
Abbey Pub, 3420 West Grace, (773)463-5808.
fado Irish Pub, 100 West Grand, (312)836-0066.
Hidden Shamrock,, 2723 North Halsted, (773)883-0304.
Higher Ground, 2022 West Roscoe, (773)868-0075.
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