Ireland hasn’t often garnered fame for haute cuisine, or even a highly anticipated meal — until recently. Now locals flock to Brookline Village’s Matt Murphy’s just to order a brown bag of hand-cut chips and a crock of homemade spiced ketchup. And after years of enduring a poor culinary reputation, the Irish have vastly improved a frequently lackluster American dish. Matt Murphy’s take on the classic egg-salad sandwich might not be traditional, but it’s certainly one of the best around.

What could be just mayonnaise-laden egg bits smeared between two slices of flimsy white bread has been upgraded. To start, Wonder Bread is a distant memory; here, substantial cuts of brown soda bread bind together not only a hearty egg salad, but also spears of roasted asparagus, shards of pickled onions, and sheets of mild Irish smoked salmon. Top it off with a frosty pint of pear cider ($4), and raise a glass to Ireland.

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