I’m a foodie fan... here’s four great treats to be had in Cork
Devotion to friends and family are a given, but my life-long love of good food comes a close third. I love food and will go to significant efforts to seek out a delicious morsel.
For me, it is not just sustenance on a plate, although I do believe ‘you are what you eat’. The food we eat is about nourishment, culture, connection, pleasure, community, commerce, climate, and so much more.
Living in Cork city, we are fortunate to be surrounded by plenty of others who see the crucial importance of good food as a core component of health and happiness.
Some of those food lovers and growers are professionals who spend their daily energy growing or serving up food and meals that nourish us. Blessed be the growers and the cooks!
Cork On A Fork Fest returns next week to celebrate Cork food’s place at the top table of Irish cuisine. It’s not just about fine dining and fancy meals, though there are exciting options for a splurge night out in Cork’s top restaurants. It is about where food comes from, who is making it, and how it can bring us together.
The festival programme is extensive, and if you are not one of those poor souls for whom ‘food is just fuel’, you’ll find an event that piques your fancy.
Maybe a cob-oven pizza in Knocknaheeny, spit-roasted pork with storytelling in Glenbrook Farm, or migrant chefs sharing their dishes over an evening at St Peter’s Church?
Free talks and tours in community gardens and local libraries, multi-cultural cooking demos on Emmet Place, and a food and craft evening market at Elizabeth Fort with outdoor games by Let’s Play Cork are just some of the events I hope to catch.
Cork On A Fork is a celebration of what food can do when it’s used to bring people together - not just to create pretty plates for Instagram. And the real beauty of it is that we get to continue the celebration throughout the year.
Here are some of my top Cork food recommendations that can be enjoyed any time.
When restaurants get compared to time machines, it’s often a disparaging ‘haven’t moved with the times’ critique, but the papaya salad in MacCurtain Street’s Golden Elephant restaurant happily transported me to Phetchaburi Road, Bangkok, circa 2008.
I was on my first South-East Asian trip having my mind and tastebuds blown with the salt/acid/heat/sweet cacophony of Thai cooking. If you have ever hankered to visit Thailand but can’t justify the cost or the carbon footprint of a trip, get yourself up to MacCurtain Street, order the Classic Papaya Salad, close your eyes, and be transported.
You can say ‘khap khun ka/thank you’ to me later.
The Sandwich Stall in the English Market is a regular lunch spot for me. Its salads, sandwiches and chana masala are all delicious and nutritious lunch fare, but every now and again (or maybe regularly but I miss the boat) they sell a chocolate hazelnut power ball treat whose cocoon of chocolate glossiness with jaunty hazelnut on top calls to me from the glass cabinet.
If I see it, I can’t not buy it. It tastes like a health food version of the Ambassador’s favourite Ferrero Rocher sweet - but in a good way.
During the warm weather recently, I was gasping for a cold refreshing drink. Ideally, a beverage that wasn’t loaded with ten teaspoons of sugar or made by a company that is a major producer of plastic pollution and a boycott target due to links with Israeli settlements.
My Goodness serves great vegan food from its English Market stall but also sells fermented drinks like kefir and kombucha and foods like kimchi and sauerkraut.
Their lemon and ginger kombucha is scrumptious (although perhaps an acquired taste - my kids were not convinced) with a satisfying, celebratory pop of fizz on opening.
I eat this pitta bread falafel sandwich once a week. As do many other Corkonians, judging by the queues.
It is bursting with fresh, flavourful salad and roasted aubergine - one of the best vegetarian sandwiches in town.
This is a sandwich that requires extra napkins - and maybe don’t eat it on a first date. It’s hard to be attractive and dignified, stuffing a juicy pitta in your face.
I could fill pages about all the delicious things Cork has to offer yet it also feels strange to be writing joyfully about food when images of starvation in Gaza haunt our screens. The contrast between our abundance and their enforced famine is jarring.
Living in Cork, where food is not only accessible but celebrated, is a privilege that demands reflection. We can’t reconcile this disparity - but we can be awake to it.
We can eat with awareness. We can support local producers, avoid exploitative supply chains, and reject brands complicit in systems of violence. The most meaningful way to honour what we have is to ensure our choices don’t feed injustice elsewhere.
So, eat up Cork, with gratitude and care and consideration.
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