What's the story with getting a good breakfast in this town?

I love a cooked breakfast of a Saturday morning. My wife, Bundle, loves a good cooked breakfast of a Saturday morning. So, why is it, that we keep getting served guff in places that spice it up on their menu as "brunch".


We normally get a good breakfast in Le Cafe in Clonee village. It's not brunch. It's a fried breakfast with no fuss. It's just cooked perfectly. If your mother was one of those people who was a good cook, then Le Cafe serve you a breakfast your mum would make. Perfect. Nothing burnt, undercooked and the ingredients are first class.

Go ten miles into Dublin 4 to the Schoolhouse Hotel and try their Schoolhouse Breakfast and what do you get? Reheated guff for €8.50. Almost 2 lids more expensive than Le Cafe which doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it says on the tin.

The Schoolhouse on the other hand portends to be "ahead of its class. Unique, intimate and ideally located, the four star Schoolhouse Hotel exudes a warm and friendly atmosphere."

And it was. Two years ago.

We used to live just behind the Schoolhouse and frequented the place quite often. It was never tops for a good brekkie, but, we never had reason to say we'd never go back again until today. Indeed, the best breakfast for both value and how it was cooked was in the 51 on Haddington Road when it was officially called Paddy Flaherty's.

Their brekkie was very much like Le Cafe's, except it came with chips over the top.

It's not just the Schoolhouse who don't offer a decently cooked breakfast. There are numerous other establishments which sex up a cooked breakfast by calling it brunch, but, still couldn't fry an egg Sally O'Brien style.

Having said that, most are streets above the fare served up to us in the Schoolhouse today.

This is my email of complaint:

My Wife and I had the very unpleasant experience of eating your
"Schoolhouse Breakfast" earlier this afternoon.

We ordered our breakfasts to be served with so called "perfect
scrambled eggs". They were turgid. They were congealed. They were luke
warm and if I were Kevin Myers I could think of a lot more vulgar
names to call them, but, perfect they weren't.

The sausages looked old and withered and the rashers almost had as
much fat on them as the Tanaiste.

The whole breakfast was clearly a re-heat.

I have had a MacDonalds breakfast and it is clearly head and shoulders
above what you served to us today.

My wife suggested that we send it back, but unfortuneately, we didn't
have the time and we would never eat something from a kitchen after we
had sent the orignal order back, as you'd never know what the kitchen
staff will add to your new order.

I would never suggest that your staff would contemplate anything
improper, indeed we have met many of them of over the years as we used
to lived behind your hotel in Estate Cottages. We have had many
enjoyable occassions in your establishment, but, today''s fare was
just not up to the standard we had come to expect from a Dublin 4 cafe
bar.

We would also like you to note that the hygiene in the toilets was of
a very, very poor standard. Crumpled-up toilet tissue was clearly
visable as well as a build up of grit behind the lavatories in the
gents toilets.

There was also a large open bin which had been left in the
middle of the floor and the toilet brush in one of the cubicles had
been left on the floor and the whole gents facilities looked like they
would do had a crowd for a six nations game been in the pub for the
whole day.