Editorial Review
The English Market
The Atmosphere
“Two hundred years old and still a working food market rather than a food court.”
The English Market has traded in the middle of Cork since 1788, and it has resisted becoming a tourist attraction in the way most European market halls have. Butchers still sell tripe and drisheen, the fishmongers still shout the price of hake, and the cheese counters carry the farmhouse cheeses that rebuilt Irish food in the 1980s. The Farmgate café on the balcony cooks what the stalls below are selling that morning, which makes it the single best-value lunch in the country. An hour here explains Cork better than any guided tour of the city.
Rooms Worth Requesting
What it actually feels like.
Go before noon on a weekday, buy cheese from the counter downstairs, then eat upstairs at the Farmgate looking down over the stalls.
Why we recommend it
A space that justifies the journey.
It is a market that Cork actually shops in. That is rare now, and it is why the produce is better here than in any comparable hall in Ireland or Britain.