Irish food

Irish stew

The national dish in its oldest form: lamb or mutton slow-cooked with potatoes, onions and carrots until the potatoes thicken the broth. Purists argue about carrots; nobody argues while eating it.

Order it: Ask for it with brown soda bread on the side for the last of the broth.

Full Irish breakfast

Fried eggs, rashers (back bacon), sausages, black and white pudding, beans, mushrooms, tomato and toast or potato bread. White pudding (oatmeal, suet and pork) is the item visitors most underestimate.

Order it: Order it before a big driving day; you will not need lunch.

Seafood chowder

A creamy bowl of the day's catch (salmon, white fish, mussels and prawns), found in harbour pubs from Kinsale to Dingle to Carlingford. Every kitchen guards its own version.

Order it: It should come with brown soda bread. It almost always does.

Boxty

A traditional potato pancake of grated raw potato, mashed potato and flour, fried until crisp-edged. The old rhyme warns: “Boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan; if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man.”

Order it: Try it as a wrap or with a fry-up in Leitrim, Cavan or Fermanagh.

Colcannon & champ

Mashed potato worked with kale or cabbage and butter (colcannon), or with spring onions (champ). Traditionally eaten at Halloween, when a ring or coin might be hidden in it for luck.

Order it: If it's on a specials board in autumn, that's the season talking. Order it.

Soda bread

Ireland's everyday loaf: flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda and buttermilk, raised by the soda rather than yeast, marked with a cross “to let the fairies out”, and to bless the bread, as older bakers will tell you. Brown soda bread uses wholemeal flour.

Order it: Warm, thickly buttered, beside chowder or stew. Buy a loaf for the road.

Dublin coddle

A slow-simmered one-pot of sausages, rashers, potatoes and onions: Dublin's working-class classic, traditionally made from the week's leftovers. It looks pale; it tastes like home.

Order it: Harder to find on menus than it should be. If a Dublin pub offers it, take the chance.

Potato farls & the Ulster fry

The northern breakfast adds potato farls (griddled potato bread quarters) and soda farls to the plate. Order an “Ulster fry” in Belfast or Derry and this is the fuller picture.

Order it: Soda farl, toasted, with butter and jam after the fry. Trust us.

Barmbrack

A tea-soaked fruit loaf (from the Irish bairín breac, “speckled loaf”), eaten buttered with tea. At Halloween, charms baked inside (a ring for marriage, a coin for wealth) turn it into a fortune-telling device.

Order it: A slice with a pot of tea in the afternoon. Check for charms in October.