Cork calls itself the food capital of Ireland and mostly gets away with it: butter empires, farmhouse cheese, drisheen for breakfast and a brewery on nearly every quay. Three days run from Saturday market stalls to counter-seat ramen and foraged cocktails.
Saturday market on the city's old huckster street, trading 09:00–14:00. Stalls carry Ardsallagh goat's cheese, Gubbeen charcuterie, Toonsbridge buffalo mozzarella and sourdough, plus hot Vietnamese and Mexican plates.
Bistro where Claire Nash lists every supplier by name on the menu. The Producers' Plate — Cork cheeses, Skeaghanore duck, Ummera smoked salmon and brown soda bread — is the tidiest edible map of the county you can eat.
Museum recording how Cork ran the world's largest butter market from 1770, shipping salted butter in oak firkins to the Caribbean and India. Exhibits include a thousand-year-old lump of bog butter and the Kerrygold story.
Family-run since 1850, stocking around 400 Irish craft beers alongside Cork whiskeys, Nohoval's Stonewell cider and West Cork gin. Staff assemble mixed tasting boxes by county and know most of the brewers personally.
Nine-table café doing the full Cork breakfast properly: fried drisheen and tripe served with rashers, black pudding and potato cake, plus buttermilk pancakes and Cork-roasted coffee. No bookings, queues from 10:30.
Fish-and-nothing-else room from the Elbow Lane group, cooking whole-catch and fin-to-tail from day boats at Union Hall and Ballycotton. The menu is written after the boats land; house-cured roe and smoked fish are constants.
Brewery bar on the site of a 13th-century Franciscan monastery, producing Rebel Red and Shandon Stout since 1998. The long walled beer garden runs a wood-fired pizza kitchen and hosts the Easter and October beer festivals.
Denis Cotter's dining room, vegetarian since 1993 and still the most serious meat-free kitchen in Ireland. Most produce arrives from Ultan Walsh's farm in east Cork, and the tasting menu is rewritten around what he cuts.
Cavernous dockside warehouse holding more than 30 street food traders — Korean, Filipino, Neapolitan pizza, bagels, dumplings — plus coffee roasters and a bar, all at long communal tables. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 09:00.
Takashi Miyazaki's eight-stool counter south of the river, Bib Gourmand-listed, serving donburi, karaage and shoyu ramen built on Irish pork and properly made dashi. Mostly takeaway, and the queue moves quickly.
Brewpub in a converted garage with the fermentation tanks in full view behind the bar. Handsome Jack pale ale and Mi Daza stout are brewed on the premises; the brewery tour finishes with a four-glass tasting paddle.
Bar working from a seasonal menu of foraged and Cork-grown ingredients — gorse, sea buckthorn, Beara sea salt, garden herbs — with the entire drinks list rewritten four times a year and repeatedly ranked among the world's best.