Susan O’Sullivan’s Farmhouse Café, on Dublin’s hectic Long Mile Road, is a punter’s choice, and one of the best places to get one of the best breakfasts in Dublin.
The room is a pleasing mash-up, a higgledy-piggledy bricolage which has evolved as the café has evolved and expanded, with two counters, one where you order or collect coffee, and one behind which the team do their thing.
That thing begins with basics: coffee and bread are both first class in TFC, so getting a sarnie to go and a cup of joe is always a treat. The sourdough loaves used by the café are big, bounteous batch loaves and cobs, baked in super-deep tins in the little bakery space which is behind the service counter.
If you do find yourself in the Long Mile Road zone, anticipating a long drive around the M50 and then down to Cork or up to Belfast or Derry, then grabbing one of the signature sandwiches – jalapeno chicken with farm leaves; grilled cheese and overnight-cooked gammon; the BELT – is just about the best advice we can give to make the journey enjoyable.
And whilst we are handing out advice today, here is some more: you won’t find a better breakfast than the one served in TFC, so try to get a parking space in front and then head through the doors and grab a seat.
The menu is delightfully personal, using produce from Susan’s own organic farm in County Kildare. So whilst there are the eggy classics – eggs on toast with organic greens and herby oil; full farmhouse breakfast – there are also delightful surprises, like homegrown spinach cooked with Parmesan and served with poached eggs, and the FHC garden brunch, which collates beetroot hummus, lentil salad, kale, watercress, cherry tomatoes, pickled onions and spiced seeds with soft-cooked eggs on sourdough, a blast of good health for those who have been up since the early hours.
John went for the FHC breakfast sandwich, the twin doorsteps of bread wrapped around crispy bacon, Sean Kelly’s white pudding from Westport, sausages, a fried egg, loads of butter and the house relish. As breakfast, it was perfect. As a sandwich, it was fabulous.
Sam went for the FFB – Full Farmhouse Breakfast – a panjandrum of all the good things which Susan brings together, and a statement of how high quality ingredients are the vital sauce that makes the Irish breakfast special.
This was special in every way, the egg perfectly finished, the bacon crisp, the sausages porky and sweet, the Kelly’s pudding a statement of the art, two big shards of batch loaf with butter, with the house relish setting everything off, just so.
As usual, the room was jammers, full of happy people at their ease enjoying truly inspiring cooking. Susan O’Sullivan never misses a beat, so standards are both consistent and sky-high, the simple things done with utmost care and attention to detail.
You get back into the car, and the long journey home begins with that 180-degree turn back onto the Long Mile so you can head out of town. No one is supposed to do it, but everyone does anyways.
~JMcK with photos by Samuel McKenna
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1’000% one of the best, most authentic taste places in Ireland. Common sense and real care oozing out of their every creation and service touch point.