Restaurant Review: Cork's Black Market is more vibrant than the decor suggests

The Black Market, Ballintemple, Cork

• The Black Market
• Dornan’s Yard, Monahan Rd, Ballintemple, Cork, T12 NXN1
• Tel. [phone]
• theblackmarketcork.ie
• [e-mail]
• Opening hours: Wednesday to Friday, 9am to 8pm; Saturday to Sunday, 10am to 8pm

If the immensely popular Marina Market, with its broad appeal spanning all ages and tastes, might be viewed as your always up-for-the-craic cousin, mad for road and to be found at every single féile, fleadh, festival, and fiesta in the parish, then The Black Market is your sophisto-superhip cousin, slinking around in limited edition trainers, nodding along insouciantly to Berlin electronica noodling, and never, ever removing the vintage sunglasses.

It begins with location and appearances: While the Marina Market is bright, blousy, and colourful, fully embracing its rambling thrift store chic, and is immediately obvious from either of two approaches — the docks and along Centre Park Rd — The Black Market can’t even be spotted from the roadside, the only indication of its presence a possibly too discreet sign — when it first opened in 2021, I often missed it entirely.

In the same industrial neighbourhood as the Marina Market, it is tucked into the rear of an industrial unit along Monahan Rd, a rather petite space in comparison to Marina Market’s humongous enormo-dome. And it is black. Very black.

Converted shipping containers housing food outlets form three sides of a quadrant around a central dining area, populated with picnic benches, planters, and booths. 

The shipping containers are painted matte black, as is the rest of the interior, including the soaring roof. It is a bold move, especially in a land where the default sky colour is often pretty similar. 

There are fierce, funky, and quite striking murals high above a floor rimmed with bright green artificial grass, but when all is said and done, this market is undoubtedly ‘black’ which may explain a rather muted atmosphere when anything less than rammed.

A berry smoothie (mixed berries, natural yoghurt, banana, orange juice, and protein) from A&P Smoothie Bar has me smugly patting my own back for healthy food choices even if I’m not rubbing my belly in epicurean ecstasy at a rather bland effort.

A breakfast quesadilla from Brendan’s Burritos is a meal and a half: Scrambled eggs, homemade salsa, guacamole, grated Irish cheddar, and jalapenos, folded into a toasted tortilla. Good brekkie fare but, so substantial, I take half home for a still slumbering No 2 Son who subsequently nods groggy approval while still emerging from his coma.

Burritos from Brendan's

Brendan’s Burritos, around since 2009, must have fed half of Cork’s teenagers, for a burrito is a near-perfect foodstuff for hormonal adolescents with insatiable appetites and zero patience for ‘fiddly bits’. The BB formula is simple: Add protein of choice to the following: Black beans and brown rice, homemade salsa, grated Irish cheddar, and Jalapenos. Bundle them all together in a tortilla parcel and grill.

No 2 Son has marinated grilled chicken — along with beef, steak and vegetarian, ‘Irish’ options include black pudding (with optional egg), and ‘potato’, steamed, then grilled —and he puts it away like a python chowing down on a baby deer.

La Daughter gets a rush of blood to the head and spurns burrito for beef nachos, again with the same list of ingredients above — staff training must be pretty straightforward — and additional sour cream, another pleasant and very filling eating experience.

Tirab Smash Burger’s smash classic is a very decent burger indeed, while SpouseGirl plumps instead for the African chicken volcano (hot/mild) marinated chicken breast with special African sauce with cheese, beetroot pickles, lettuce, cheese, tomato, carmelised onion, and TB sauce. 

It too is a tasty combo even if ‘mild’ chilli sauce has her sweating likes she’s sprinted across the Sahara in a sable fur coat.

The best street food stalls invariably have originality, some innovation to their offering, and Jamie Kelly and Tim O’Kennedy’s The Pie Guys aren’t found wanting in this regard. 

Jamie Kelly and Tim O’Kennedy’s The Pie Guys aren’t found wanting.

The buttery pastry is cracking, fillings are better again. Creamy chicken tarragon has succulent meat in a rich béchamel enervated with a clean anise of tarragon. Beef and Beamish is deeply flavoursome Dexter beef, from North Cork, in a potent Beamish gravy. 

Sides are pickled veg, buttermilk and dill coleslaw, and a 70/30 mashed potato, the ‘30’ being the commendable ratio of butter to spud, all good but not remotely in the same league as the pies.

Having just opened a second outlet, in the English Market, TPG may yet have the first pies to truly capture the Irish palate, following similar failed efforts of yore to introduce this very British staple to these shores.

Taste of Home’s cepelinai is where the fun begins.

Of all the stalls, Taste of Home, offering Eastern European cuisine, intrigues me most, offering something genuinely different to most of the fare on offer in either of the markets, Black or Marina.

Run by Lithuanian woman Rita Bendinskiene, she does admittedly stray beyond her own national borders but in a manner that notes common tropes — especially spuds and meat.

Rotisserie chicken gets top menu billing but cepelinai is where the fun begins, an iconic national dish of Lithuania, dumplings of grated and riced potatoes stuffed with ground pork. 

Potato pancakes, akin to latkes or Polish placki, grated potato, filled with more pork and fried, are with sour cream or creamy mushroom sauce — I take both.

Fried dumplings are filled with, yes, more pork, and encased in unleavened dough, then deep fried to a crisp, crunchy shell for a delicious molten hot filling and served with sour cream, bacon bits, fried onions and garlic/cheese sauce. Fiercely flavoursome and very addictive, we suffer multiple mouthburns as gluttony trumps common sense.

Along with the very good Soma coffee stall (Soma coffee is also roasted on site, visible through a glass wall in one of the shipping containers), it is by far my favourite of all The Black Market offerings. 

Sure, it is food for a season other than summer, calorific combos to keep a body motoring through harsh and freezing winters, but the flavours are just so comforting and compelling in equal measure, tart sour cream and fennel-y mushroom sauce adding uplifting grace notes to deeply grounded fare. A Gira, the Lithuanian take on Kvass, a drink made with fermented dark rye bread, washes all down very nicely indeed.

A few more stalls of this calibre and The Black Market could well become the new… black?