I’m a big fan of the eating out scene in Dublin, but four trips to Cork have made me realise that there’s loads to explore within the rival city’s food culture too. Besides excellent restaurants, Cork even has a museum dedicated to butter. It’s only slightly unfair that the museum can incite a serious butter craving but you can’t eat any butter there. However, during the recent bank holiday weekend, I was able to satisfy sahlab and dosa cravings, and I’ve also had other great dishes and drinks during other visits.
One of the first few places I went to during my first trip to Cork was the English Market. An indoor food market that has traders selling everything from chocolate to olives, the English Market is great to grab a takeaway lunch from. I often buy houmous, bread and olives to take up to my hotel room and eat in privacy. The olives with chilli from The Real Olive Company are my favourite, and the selection of bread from The Alternative Bread Company is impressive. Besides the traders, the English Market also houses The Farmgate Restaurant, which specialises in Irish food. I remember loving the lamb stew and roasted spuds.
A short walk from the English Market is Izz Cafe. Izz serves Palestinian food and their houmous is some of the best I’ve eaten. Their ‘tasters mix’, a platter with regular hummus, avocado and beetroot houmous, babaganoush, tabouleh and pickles is Instagrammed very often. The pita that comes with it is soft and always hot. Another dish I love at Izz is makdous: pickled baby aubergine. But what really stole the show for me was the sahlab: a drink that borders on being a dessert, made with milk, cream, cornflour, cinnamon, nuts and rose petals. A comforting winter warmer, Izz’s sahlab had me smitten. I would’ve got another cup if I wasn’t full with the rest of the food.
Speaking of food (or drinks) that have such power, it would be a disservice to all of you if I didn’t mention Iyer’s Cafe. Standing quietly along Pope’s Quay, Iyer’s specialises in dosa (for the uninitiated, dosa is a South Indian dish, made with very thin batter that’s spread in a circle on a pan and allowed to cook). I had the masala dosa at Iyer’s in 2021 for the first time, and immediately decided that it was the best dosa in Ireland. However, when I tried the peanut and garlic podi (a coarse spice powder) dosa this year, I realised it was even better than most dosas in India. The insides of the thin, crisp dosa were slathered with nutty, garlicky podi, and it came with a small tub of tasty sambar (a kind of stew that uses lentils and tamarind), and two smaller tubs of savoury chutneys.
I was also able to sample chilli cassava, which was on the menu at Iyer’s the weekend I was there. Chunks of cassava had been marinated in spices, batter-fried, and served hot with chopped onions and a wedge of lime. It was a great snack to go with the cafe’s creamy mango lassi. If you’re not a lassi person, I recommend getting a frothy Mysore coffee to end your meal with. After gushing about Iyer’s to my heart’s content, both in my mind and on my social media, I began planning where I’d have drinks in the evening.
A kind friend recommended Paladar, a Latin American inspired cocktail bar, but I was late in making a booking and decided to rely on their walk-in quota. On arriving, it became clear that there were no tables and won’t be any for a while, so I went to Paladar’s sister bar Cask.
Cask has been one of my favourite bars ever since I went for the first time. Their cocktails are inventive, and what distinguishes them from cocktails at other bars is that you can really taste the alcohol in them. While I don’t necessarily like the raw taste of alcohol and don’t mind when it’s masked with other, more tasty ingredients, I appreciate that the mixologists at Cask are so daring. Cask’s cocktail menu changes periodically, and I had the “cold shoulder” on this occasion. It was a potent mix of tequila, smoked tomatillos, micro coriander agave and mole bitters. The salt and pepper rim was a nice treat, but I ended up leaving a few sips in the glass because it was too strong for me.
It has slowly become clear to me that there’s no dearth of good bars in Cork, and the same friend who recommended Paladar also recommended L’Atitude 51, which turned out to be a charming wine bar on the corner of a street by the river. I tried orange (skin contact) wine for the first time and enjoyed it. The bar had a pleasant buzz and the servers were extremely polite.
One of the other happening places I went to—Marina Market—was also recommended by the kind friend, and I think it’s high time I credit her. Corinna Hardgrave’s recommendation had me keen on visiting Marina Market, which opens daily, from 8am-8pm. It was tough to choose what to eat from among the many exciting kiosks, but Sultan, a Moroccan kiosk, caught my attention. I got the vegetable soup from there and chips topped with cheddar and jalapenos from Prátaí, a kiosk that specialises in potatoes with different toppings. Neither of the dishes were extraordinary, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to eat surrounded by the bustle of the market and sample more than one cuisine.
Another restaurant I enjoyed in Cork city is Goldie, which calls itself a seafood restaurant but also serves great vegetarian dishes. On the evening I went, I got a number of small plates and sides to share with a friend because the mains seemed like they would be too big along with starters. Goldie’s menu changes seasonally and is always interesting.
My last meal during my most recent trip to Cork was at Koto, an unassuming Asian restaurant. I ordered the popcorn tofu and wok-fried greens, both of which were tasty (the wok-fried greens were exceptionally good). For mains, I got ‘Saigon’: spicy egg noodles with vegetables, egg, chilli jam and Sriracha. The noodles were neither too thin nor too thick, and had enough spice to satisfy a spice craving, without being overbearing. I’d recommend Koto to anyone looking for some comforting Asian food.
Cork’s food scene may not be as elaborate as Dublin’s, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still diverse. There’s everything from Middle Eastern to Indian food, and of a very high standard. I’ve embarked on trips to the city mainly for the food and never returned disappointed.
Recommendations to take away from this newsletter:
A trip to Cork and then everything in bold!
What a delightful newsletter😍. I am drooling 😋😋