BREAKFAST is the most demanding of meals. Timing, precision, and professionalism are needed to scramble the eggs just right, to whisk out the hot toast, to pour on the freshly boiled water, to squeeze the oranges, to toast the granola. It is a meal which offers almost no margin for error.
Done properly, by a good cook who has good ingredients and who cares about what he or she is doing, breakfast becomes just the best meal of the day. Fresh eggs, fresh bread, fresh fruit and freshly-brewed coffee - the combination can be intoxicating.
Done badly, with dodgy stuff slipped out of a packet, and with dubious techniques breakfast becomes a travesty - bangers dunked in a deep-fat fryer, the ping of the microwave signalling that the bacon is done, tea-bag tea and factory bread and, worst of all, the mouldering-in-a-bain-marie breakfast which so many hotels offer.
Here are 10 places to stay where breakfast is shown just the right sort of care and consideration which makes for something special first thing in the morning. Indeed, some of these breakfasts are so special that you should really get yourself up for an early-morning walk, in order to accrue the sort of appetite a good brekky deserves.
And, after everything has been deliciously dissected, why not truly spoil yourself and follow the example of some friends who stayed at one of the houses listed below.
"What will we do now?" asked one, after the morning meal. "Why don't we just go back to bed?" replied the other.
And that is just what they did.
CHESTNUT LODGE, Monkstown, Co Dublin (01-2807800)
Breakfast in Chestnut Lodge is purest joy. Not just because the cooking is so delicious - which, of course, it is - but also because everything is done so properly, so correctly.
Nancy Malone's house almost demands that things are shown proper respect, for it is indeed a fine place, the jewel of a smart Georgian terrace. And breakfast sees that proper respect for the most important meal of the day: the glint and gleam of silver teapots and cutlery, the crisp cut of starched linen, the nuttiness of good soda bread, freshly squeezed orange juice, some of Nancy's justly celebrated strawberry muesli, good eggs and bacon. Perfect, in fact.
NEWBAY HOUSE, Wexford, Co Wexford (053-42779)
It's the muffins that do it. We don't make much of a song and dance about muffins in this country, so when you encounter splendid examples of the art, such as those made by Paul Drumm, then a good breakfast suddenly becomes something extra-special.
This is Paul and Min Drumm's gift. It is the small details in Newbay, in both the house itself and the cooking, combined with the lighthearted nature of this big, old pile, that make it joyful.
ADELE'S BAKERY, Schull, West Cork (028-28459)
The great thing about breakfast in Adele's is that you wake up to the sounds and smells of a bakery - though you don't actually have to stay in the four rooms above this splendid bakery and restaurant in order to have breakfast. Just step in off the street and allow the wafting odour of fresh bread to entrance you, and the solid narcotic hit of strong coffee set you up for the day.
As you munch, Ms Connor will be down in the kitchen, bashing out the Chelsea buns, moulding the wonderful, little, sourdough loaves, hatching the wonder of yeast into multifarious magnificence. A second cup of coffee, a copy of The Irish Times to peruse, ah, what bliss!
ANGLESEA TOWNHOUSE, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 (01-6683877)
If you are the sort of traveller who likes to arrive well in time for flights, boat departures etc, then don't stay in Anglesea. Why? Well, because breakfast here is not so much a meal as a ritual and, as befits a ritual, it is done in a ritualistic way and at a ritualistic pace. Which means slowly.
So, your breakfast kedgeree will take 20 minutes, they say. But, in fact, everything takes 20 minutes; the splendid, meticulous fried breakfast, which follows a splendid peeled peach served with quiet aplomb, or a droolsome compote, or whatever it is you choose. To seize on an idea of the pace, think if you can of Martin Scorsese's strange movie The Age Of Innocence. That's the speed: not funereal, just other-worldly.
BALLYCORMAC HOUSE, Borrisokane, Co Tipperary (067-21129)
Homemade sausages! Yes! Flavoured with apple and sage! Yes!
Hot griddle scones! Yes!
Fig and gooseberry preserve! Yes!
Warm stewed apple and yogurt! Yes!
BALLYMALOE HOUSE, Shanagarry, East Cork (021-652531)
Look at the breakfast table at Ballymaloe and you can see in a glance the entire ethos of this redoubtable house.
Everything, but everything, will be local, handmade, home-produced. Porridge oats roasted by Donal Creedon in Macroom. Fresh breads baked that morning in the kitchen. Jams made with fruit from their own trees. Real country butter. Eggs laid out back by the Ballymaloe hens. Local bacon. Crockery from Stephen Pearce, the local potter.
Some people don't see all this, amazingly. The Shaker-style simplicity of Ballymaloe passes them by and they remark only on the absence of all the cliche's of the country house business. But, if you allow yourself the merest second to appreciate the elemental brilliance and profundity of this celebration of good things, and then lingeringly indulge yourself in the tastes of the Ballymaloe breakfast, you realise how unique it is.
CASTLE MURRAY HOUSE, Dunkineely, Co Donegal (073-37022)
In theory, the French do not understand breakfast. They themselves, of course, do not eat it, and when they do make a stab at it, they get it completely wrong.
Thierry Delcros is the exception which proves this rule. He makes a cracking breakfast in Castle Murray House, his smashing restaurant with rooms a few miles west of Donegal town, with eggs laid by his very own hens, good bacon, good coffee, all of the little details just right. And, as you would expect from the fine cook he is, his breakfast cooking shows application and concentration: he approaches the Irish breakfast as a challenge, not just a routine.
Fergus View, Kilnaboy, Co Clare (065-37606)
Crepes with kiwi fruit and maple syrup; smoked kippers with tomato; Kilnaboy cheeses with fruit; scrambled eggs with bacon; traditional Irish breakfast.
It's just not fair, is it? How on earth can you decide what to have for breakfast in Mary Kelleher's lovely house, when secretly, truthfully, hand-on-your-heart, honest to God, you want to try everything? The cheeses; the eggs; the kippers; the bangers and the bacon. The lot.
Mrs Kelleher inspires this sort of craving by being a smashing cook, with all her food showing meticulous care and attention to detail. So how do you overcome the problem of what to choose?
Simple. Stay for a minimum of four or five days and try the lot.
Furziestown House, Tacurnshane, Co Wexford (053-31376)
It is the tastes of the sunny south-east which I associate with Yvonne Pim's lovely little B&B. The foods and fruits from her garden-tunnel crop up for dinner and breakfast and when those fruits are used to make a compote of gooseberries, or perhaps a compote which teams raspberries with blackcurrants, and there are her own sweet jams and jellies to spoon on to good toast and scones, and home-made granola and eggs laid by those hens who are clucking and scraping around outside, then you seem to be eating nothing less than the taste of sunshine.
GRANGE LODGE, Dungannon, Co Tyrone (08687-84212)
What is it with the northerners? You might reckon them an abstemious bunch, by and large, and yet the great breakfasts of two of the great northern houses make a speciality of tippling a healthy blast of booze into their morning porridge.
In Grange Lodge, Norah Browne uses the magnificent Bushmills single malt to form a necklace around the rim of a bowl of fine, slow-cooked porridge. Further north, Rosemary White in Maddybenny Farmhouse, just outside Portrush, uses the sweetly sticky Drambuie to get your motor running. Either one is sublime: don't be frightened by the idea of ingesting hard spirit at eight in the morning, the booze melts away on the heat, leaving the suggestion of alcohol and a beautifully melded concoction.