Breakfast at The Bailie is one of our favourite parts of the day, mostly because you never quite know who will be around the tables. Our overnight guests are coming downstairs knowing a cooked breakfast is already part of their stay, while other familiar faces are coming through the door simply because they fancy breakfast out. There might be friends meeting for a long-overdue catch-up, someone grabbing a good breakfast before a busy day, a family home visiting Cavan or guests staying with us while attending a wedding or celebration elsewhere in the area. It makes for a lovely mix, and by the time the coffee is poured and the kitchen is in full swing, the morning has well and truly started.
We’ve also learned not to pay too much attention to anyone who announces that they’re “not really hungry”. Breakfast has a habit of changing people’s minds. You might sit down thinking a coffee will do nicely, then catch the smell from the kitchen or see somebody else’s breakfast arrive and suddenly reconsider the whole situation. We’ve seen it happen often enough. And why not? One of the pleasures of staying away is waking up knowing breakfast is taken care of, while one of the pleasures of living locally is being able to decide that somebody else can cook it for you today. Either way, you get to sit back, enjoy your tea or coffee and leave the dishes with us.
We’re proud to be part of the Created in Cavan network, and breakfast is a nice example of why that connection means something to us. Created in Cavan brings together the people growing, producing, supplying, cooking and serving food and drink across the county, celebrating a food scene that Cavan has every reason to shout about. For us at The Bailie, it fits naturally with how we like to do things. We’re right in the heart of Bailieborough, surrounded by a county with a strong farming and food heritage, and we believe the businesses behind the ingredients matter. It’s not about making a grand performance out of local sourcing; it’s about supporting good suppliers, choosing quality Irish produce wherever possible and serving food we’re proud to put in front of people. Created in Cavan itself highlights The Bailie as part of Bailieborough’s local food offering and notes our focus on quality Irish ingredients and sourcing locally wherever possible.
That brings us to some of the people behind our breakfast. Our suppliers include Ashbrook for meat products, P&B Lynch for pork and bacon products, Fanfruit for fruit and vegetables and Irish Pride for bakery products. They might not be the names you’re thinking about while you’re deciding what to order, but they’re part of what makes a good breakfast possible. We like ingredients that can speak for themselves because breakfast isn’t a meal that needs to be messed around with too much. A generous cooked breakfast, eggs just as you like them, fresh toast, something lighter if that’s what you fancy and plenty of tea or coffee – get those things right and everyone is happy.
Of course, “just as you like it” can cover quite a lot of ground in Cavan. Put a few people around a breakfast table and you’ll soon discover everyone has their own way of doing things. Families have their preferences, people know exactly how they like their breakfast cooked, and nobody needs us wading into the middle of the great black-or-white-pudding debate. We’re much happier listening to the chat from the tables while getting on with breakfast. There’s a lovely point on a busy morning when several plates have just gone out and the room gets noticeably quieter for a few minutes. We know better than to interrupt. When people are too busy enjoying breakfast to talk, the kitchen is probably doing something right.
Weekends can bring their own stories. We often have guests staying with us who are attending weddings and celebrations at venues elsewhere, and the morning after can make for entertaining breakfast conversation. Photographs are inspected, stories are compared and somebody invariably learns about a moment from the night before that had somehow escaped their own memory. Meanwhile, at the next table, two friends from Bailieborough might be putting the world to rights over breakfast, and across the room someone is planning a day exploring Cavan. We love that. The Bailie is a hotel, but it’s also very much part of the town, and breakfast is one of those times when visitors and local customers naturally come together without anyone giving it much thought.
There’s no rule saying a Cavan breakfast has to mean the biggest cooked plate you can manage either. Some mornings that’s exactly what you want; on others, fruit, yoghurt, cereal or toast is more your style. The important bit is having a breakfast you’ll actually enjoy. Fanfruit is among the suppliers of our fruit and vegetables and Irish Pride is one of our bakery suppliers, so the everyday things matter to us just as much as the centre of a cooked breakfast. Although we will say that ordering something light and then spending the next twenty minutes helping yourself to the other half’s breakfast is a practice we have observed. We don’t take sides.
What we really want breakfast at The Bailie to feel like is easy. Nobody should be sitting over a hotel breakfast feeling they need to hurry through it. If you’re staying overnight, it’s part of your stay, so come down and enjoy it properly. If you’ve come in especially for breakfast, you’ve already made the excellent decision to let somebody else do the cooking, so you may as well enjoy that too. Have another coffee, finish the conversation and catch up on whatever has happened since you last saw each other. Life provides plenty of rushed mornings without us adding another one.
That easy welcome is probably the best way we can explain a proper Cavan start to the day. Good food matters, and so do the suppliers and producers behind it. Being part of Created in Cavan makes us even prouder to play our part in a county where food, farming and hospitality are so closely connected. But once the kitchen doors open in the morning, it becomes much simpler than all of that: people come in hungry, we feed them well, the room fills with conversation and hopefully everyone heads off into their day a little happier than when they arrived.
So if you’re staying at The Bailie, don’t skip the breakfast that comes with your stay – we’ll have it waiting for you downstairs. And if your own bed happens to be only five minutes away, that’s no reason to miss out either. Call in, bring someone whose company you enjoy and let us look after the morning for a while. A good Cavan breakfast doesn’t need an occasion. Sometimes breakfast itself is reason enough.