Historically, the French don’t do breakfast. When Elizabeth David wrote her celebrated essay An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, back in 1959, Mrs David was talking about eggs for lunch, or dinner, not breakfast. Culturally, it’s just not a French thing, and the nation gets by with that oeuf dur and a cup of bad coffee.
Which makes it all the more remarkable, then, that Jean-Baptiste Dubois, a native of France but an Irish resident of two decade’s standing, seems to us to understand breakfast almost better than anyone.
The proof lies in his work in The Stables Cafe, at the extravagantly marvellous Mount Congreve estate, just a few miles west of Waterford city.
Everything about breakfast here simply chimes. For instance, the menu begins with a written statement that introduces “Our Ethos.” So, we are a long ways from the fry-up already, as the menu outlines the kitchen’s desire to use the produce of the walled garden and the orchards to “capture the essence of Mount Congreve.”
Open up the menu and you are confronted with some extremely smart thinking. It is divided like this:
Grains. Grill. Baked. Cracked. Flipped.
The drinks are: Leaf. Bean. Melted. Over Ice. Chilled. Squeezed.
That’s a masterly way to cover all the options of an Irish breakfast, opening up a pathway that could lead you all the way from rooibos to berry compote to Greenway Eggs. There is a lot of original and intelligent work being done all around the country by determined hospitality folk who want to shake off the shackles of the Traditional Breakfast, and The Stables is one of the very best examples of this new way of thinking.
What JB is doing here is turning breakfast into a feast, a treat, a special occasion. We were with two friends on a Sunday morning, and this breakfast felt like a real Sunday Morning Special. You half expect the table next to you to arrive wearing their dressing gowns and slippers, primed to chill, ready to order that third cup of coffee.
If you begin with the Grains – and you so should – then expect a masterly bowl of Flahavan’s oats, served with berry compote and yogurt. The granola comes in a kilner jar, expertly toasted, settled on top of plain yogurt and with more of that lovely, puckering berry compote.
The Grill offers a Mini breakfast, or the Works, which covers the waterfront: Lisduggan Farm sausages; free-range duck egg; black pudding; dry-cured bacon; grilled mushrooms; sautéed potatoes; tomato chutney, and a slice of good sourdough bread.
You will need to lie down after that, so maybe it is a good idea to come in your dressing gown.
For out-of-towners, nothing says Waterford quite like a Waterford Blaa from Walsh’s Bakehouse, and here the porcine feast is copper-fastened with a Knockanore cheddar cheese sauce and some caramelised onions. It’s a beast of a feast, cradled in the toasted blaa, a defining example of the county’s treasures.
If JB and the team knock it out of the park with the Irish staples, it’s with their riffing on the Classics that they reach new heights. We are on record as saying that JB’s 3-egg omelette is the best we know, and here it is in all its sublime glory – and note! a folded omelette, as an omelette should be – the eggs wrapped around soft goat’s cheese and garden greens.
Elizabeth David wrote that an omelette should be “a soft bright golden roll plump and spilling out a little at the edges” and here it is: plump, bright, and freckled with a brown butter complexion. There is Lisduggan Farm bacon on the side and more Seagull sourdough, and it’s a thing of perfect beauty.
Just as good is the Stables riff on beans on toast. Eating beans for breakfast is, of course, the most culturally divisive matter concerning ourselves and our neighbours in the benighted United Kingdom. JB’s beans are nothing like Brit beans: they are home-baked cannellini beans served with bacon jam on the house brown bread, with field mushrooms on the side.
To show that everything in The Stables is a standard, but not standard issue, JB sneaks some chorizo and some spring onions into the scrambled eggs, adding a lovely allium spice note to gently cooked eggs.
JB’s food is cooking of subtlety and charm, and the crew in The Stables are personable and up for it. It’s one hell of a way to start the day.
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