Restaurant review: Pizza paradise in Cork at the coolest crossroads in Ireland

The arrival of Good Hood to St Luke's is a gamechanger

Good Hood? Great Hood! Picture: Dan Linehan

If I can find a backer, I’ll stake hard cash to bet St Luke’s, a five-minute walk from Cork’s city centre, can lay claim to the coolest crossroads in Ireland. If comely dancing maidens and handsome shimmying swains are seeking tunes, Live at St Luke’s, in a former church on one ‘corner’, is a unique venue with a sublime and eclectic programme that draws ‘pilgrims’ from all over Munster.

Decades ago, I lived in a then edgier St Luke’s, Cork’s erstwhile bohemia for a motley mob of dole-sponsored artists, musicians, and writers. The former period homes that housed the flats and bedsits of my youth may now be rapidly reconverting to their original status as property values shoot ever upwards but a louche sense of the creative lingers; the recent arrival of Mercier Press HQ only burnishes that vibe. Every artist needs a good pub — Henchy’s was never less than a great pub but has added a continental sensibility in recent years, spilling outside onto a paved ‘terrace’. Its allure is now a citywide phenomenon.