Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
hung on display at various traditional meat
and poultry stalls. But the chief attraction
is the traditional Irish food products—
tripe (animal stomach), smoked eel, black
pudding, soda bread, and Cork specialties
such as hot buttered eggs,
crubeens
(pigs'
feet), and
drisheens
(local blood sausage).
Though there are a few delis and takeout
sandwich stands, you could also put
together a lunch from ripe French cheeses
and pâtés at the
Pig's Back
or Irish farm-
house cheeses from Iago, accompanied
by crusty oven-fresh bread from the
Arbu-
tus Bakery.
Closed on Sundays, the English Market
doesn't open at dawn like some wholesale
markets do. Business begins at a reason-
able 9am and closes at 5:30pm. The
Farm-
gate Restaurant
gives you a panoramic
view of the market from an open balcony
one floor above the bustle.
Grand Parade, between Patrick and
Oliver Plunkett streets (no phone).
(
Cork Airport (122km/76 miles south of
Shannon International).
L
$$$
Hayfield Manor Hotel,
Perrott
Ave. (
&
800/525-4800
or 353/21/431-5600;
www.hayfieldmanor.ie). $$
The Gresham
Metropole,
MacCurtain St., Tivoli (
&
353/
21/450-8122
).
Open-Air Markets
3
Borough Market
Whole-Food Haven
London, England
If appearing in a Harry Potter movie means
you've made it, then London's Borough
Market finally hit the big time in 2004. This
bustling covered market—London's old-
est and biggest—seems like a natural film
location, a jumble of stalls along a maze of
lanes snuggled under the green girders of
a railway bridge. London's late-20th-cen-
tury culinary renaissance has certainly
helped to raise Borough Market's profile
as the place to go in the capital for top-
quality food shopping.
But it wasn't always that way. Though
Borough Market occupied the south end
of London Bridge for centuries—some
claim it was already an established site in
Roman times—by the 13th century it was
considered a nuisance because the food
stalls blocked traffic across the bridge.
The south side of the river was always
more disreputable than the north bank, a
neighborhood of taverns and inns (Chau-
cer's pilgrims started their trip to Canter-
bury nearby) and playhouses (including
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre). Various
monarchs over the years tried in vain to
control the market's chaos and conges-
tion. For the past 250 years, however, it
has been respectably settled on its cur-
rent site, just south of Southwark Cathe-
dral, as a wholesale fruit-and-vegetable
market run as a charity by a board of trust-
ees whose members must live in the
neighborhood.
Conveniently close to the river's
wharves, and later London Bridge railway
station, Borough Market never was just
about local produce; purveyors from all
over the U.K.—and several from Europe—
ship their goods here.
Orkney Rose,
for
example, features fresh salmon, heather-
fed lamb, Angus beef, and seafood from
the Orkney Islands—products from small
rural producers who individually could
never afford to sell in London. The whole-
sale market is open 2am to 8am nightly
except Saturday, and a retail arm of the
market was launched with instant success
in 1999 (only open Thurs 11am-5pm; Fri
noon-6pm; and Sat 9am-4pm), as things
