Green Eggs And Ham

There’s nothing green about an Irish breakfast. At Kitty Hoynes Traditional Irish Pub and Restaurant, the “meat and potatoes” of this hearty meal is, well, potatoes and meat—four kinds of meat, in fact.

While Irish breakfast is available on the Armory Square hot spot’s regular lunch and dinner menus, Kitty Hoynes also serves it two special mornings a year. On Saturday, March 13, the day of this year’s Syracuse St. Patrick’s Parade, Kitty Hoynes will dish it out starting at 8 a.m., and again on Wednesday, March 17, beginning at 9 a.m. “It’s very important to lay the foundation” for the day’s festivities, says owner David Hoyne. Breakfast costs $10.50.

That foundation consists of two eggs cooked to order, two grilled tomato halves, quartered roasted red potatoes, and two each of the following meats: bangers, which are Irish pork link sausages, named for their tendency to burst as the skin shrinks during cooking; Irish bacon, called “rashers,” which are wider-cut, chewier and leaner than American bacon; and black and white puddings, small, sliced disc sausages also made with pork and oats.

White pudding has a crispy, reddish-brown exterior with a light, spongy interior, and a pleasant salty-sausage taste. Black pudding, a blood sausage, is much darker in color.

Hoyne says the uninitiated are sometimes “kind of nervous about the black pudding, but you can always close your eyes.” It doesn’t look as daunting (read: bloody) as it might sound, however. Inside and out, the patty is a rich, pumpernickel brown. The earthy, smoky flavor bears just a hint of sweet, dark spice. It’s like the Guinness of sausage.

“Irish breakfast is a great tradition in Ireland,” says Hoyne. “We have traditional Irish food as best as we can get it, on this side of the Atlantic {at Kitty Hoynes}.” And he doesn’t settle for substitutes; the meat products are all imported from the Emerald Isle. “It would be probably easier to do any breakfast, with scrambled eggs and whatever else,” Hoyne admits. “But we are trying to be traditional and give people a taste of Ireland.”

The breakfast is also served with their slightly sweet Irish soda bread dotted with raisins—for those whose pants are not already bursting at the seams. “Originally this meal was intended to be hearty enough to sustain farmers through most of their workday,” Hoyne explains. “And the same holds true for visitors to Ireland today; the breakfast will pretty much last you until dinner time.”

“It’s a little salty," he adds, “so you’d have to stop for a pint.” Most paradegoers won’t find that objectionable.

Kitty Hoynes has been doing Irish breakfast the morning of the St. Patrick’s Parade every year since opening in 1999. This year, the Ireland vs. Wales game of the Six Nations rugby tournament will air live from Dublin at 9:30 a.m. on March 13, so patrons can watch the game over breakfast. Hoyne says, “It’s going to be a great start to the parade day.”

—Leah Dennison