Going Local

Searching for my grandfather’s birth place in Ireland I once stayed in a B&B in Waterford.

The room was awful. Mismatched furniture, taps that took forever to run, and hot water that seemed to lose interest halfway through a shower.

Nothing about the stay felt memorable.

Until the morning.

Breakfast wasn’t in a dining room but around the kitchen table. The hostess stood at the cooker, and plates kept coming.

Irish sausages. Potato farls. Brown soda bread,

Then things I had never seen on a breakfast table before.

Dilisk (seaweed), Drisheen (blood pudding and milk) which was surprisingly delicious, and Crubeens (don’t ask) Oh alright then, boiled pigs feet (well, you did want to know!),

Nobody explained any of it.

Nobody needed to.

You could taste that it came from nearby.

And suddenly the whole breakfast felt less like a menu and more like the place itself.

I remember looking around the table and I’m fairly sure one of the guests had tears in their eyes.

It made me wonder something on the journey home.

Not whether guests value local produce — that part is obvious.

The interesting question is how little of it you actually need.

Back at the hotel I didn’t redesign breakfast.

I just changed a few things.

One local sausage.

Soda bread from a nearby baker.

Homemade Boxty – grated potato pancake; crispy and slightly browned on the outside, soft inside.

Nothing dramatic.

But something shifted.