Review: Blue Rooster Bakery & Café

For Father’s Day, I told my wife that I wanted a traditional West Indian breakfast which her research indicated was really a variation of a traditional Scottish, Irish or English breakfast.  In the 1700s the British colonies of the West Indies attracted Scots and Irish with skills or money to invest, although some came as indentured servants who sold their labour to a plantation owner for fixed number of years.  Many of these British immigrants became plantation owners themselves lending their last names to their slave workers.  There are many McLarens, Wallaces, Dougans and MacDonalds in my family.  Of course, wherever people go they bring their food with them and since my great grandfather was a Scot (Francis McLaren) my grandmother learned to prepare a “special” kind of breakfast, which includes “black pudding”, baked beans, ham, sausage, mushroom or potato hash, fried egg, and toast.

Black pudding, blood sausage or blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking down the blood of an animal with meat, fat or filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.

Blue Rooster Bakery & Café - July 10, 2010

I grew up eating black pudding.  On weekends, my father would drive into town and pick up a few logs.  He would bring them home where my mother would fry them up with eggs, bacon and toast for company.  Sometimes after church he would stop on main street and buy fried black pudding from one of the street vendors.  So delicious. The spices infused the oils for an explosion of flavour in my mouth.

But this blog post is not about black pudding. It is about how a search for black pudding led to a search for a full Irish breakfast.  I Googled and Tweeted for months before I chanced upon a link which led me to the Blue Rooster Bakery & Café in Cranbury, NJ.  The Blue Rooster is located on Main Street and except for small blue signage outside, the building looks like any of the old Victorian homes in Cranbury.  I think this add to the charm of the bakery.

There is seating outside but given the heat wave that has plagued the east coast in July we opted to seek seating indoors.

Outdoor seating

A little sign on the front door instructed us to walk on through to the left to the main dining area and close the door behind to reduce the strain on the air-conditioner.  The restaurant seating and decor was arranged in a way reminiscent of a bread and breakfast.  The kind you find along the most southern part of the Jersey shore or up state New York.  Quite charming.  We walked through the first dining area into a small café area with scones, fresh coffee, and the most delicate looking pastries.

Sitting room

We were greeted by Jerard, a very pleasant young man who was our waiter for the morning. He took us through the café into another and more cozy seating area.

I explained to Jerard why I had come and that I only wanted an Irish breakfast.  My kids ordered pancakes while my wife ordered scrambled eggs and an Apple danish.  We had some of the most excellent coffee I have had outside of my house.  Turns out that the café uses the French press method for brewing coffee – this is also the way I brew coffee at home.  When breakfast arrived I dived right in and devoured the black pudding and to my pleasant surprise white pudding.  Images of the West Indies and grandma flashed through my mind.  The beans were not the sweet clammy beans you get from a Bush’s can.  The sauce was thinner and had a lemon citrus tartness to it.  However, the mushrooms were a little too salty for my taste. I prefer a low sodium diet.

Full English Breakfast