Food, glorious food: Mouthwatering guide to culinary Ireland

Food writer Joe McNamee offers a personal selection of food-focused destinations, festivals and farmers’ markets sure to excite your tastebuds

Luisne Bric from Dingle enjoys an Ice Cream at Kool Scoops, in Dingle, Co Kerry. A visit to this and other family-owned ice cream shops in Dingle is a real treat for people touring the Dingle Peninsula. 

Granted, as someone who gets fat on a professional basis, dining out and discovering local delicacies ranks very high on my list of priorities when heading on holiday — safe to say, it might even make or break a holiday, and so I always put in plenty of advance research.

But even if you are less obsessed with the nosebag than I, few and far between are the people who return from a holiday — either at home or abroad — without at least one or two fond food memories of a glorious meal while dining out in a special restaurant or of chancing upon a local foodstuff in a market that caused you to swoon in epicurean ecstasy.