Toby Kaar's Guide To Cork

EATERIES
Liberty Grill
Washington St. 
Tel 021 427 1049
Libertygrill.ie

This place makes the best breakfast in Cork. It’s maybe my favourite place to eat in all of the city. It does all-day breakfasts, they make these really weird grilled sandwiches – oh! And you know what they do really good? Poached eggs. And they have one of these really fancy menus, but it’s all like, pretty affordable so you can get, like crab cakes and shit, and French toast made with brioche. I fucking love brunch, I would just eat breakfast three times a day if I could. I know you’re only supposed to have brunch on a Sunday. I’ve been living Sundays permanently for the last year.

The Sandwich Stall
The English Market, Grand Parade
corkenglishmarket.ie

This place in the English Market makes really good sandwiches. I can’t eat all of them ‘cause I’m a vegetarian. I’m told they’re fantastic. They do an amazing spicy chickpea one and they do ones with really, really good cheese and stuff. You can get them in wraps and rolls. They take all the ingredients from the market. You can properly tell these ones have been made with like, fancy shit and I don’t consider myself a gourmand or anything but all that stuff is tasty, like. It’s all that rustic shit and I hate using that word, but it is, the bread there is rustic as fuck.

DRINKERIES

The Mutton Lane Inn
Patrick St. Tel. 021 427 3471

There’s a couple of places that do really good stout in Cork and this is one of them. It’s full of trendy people now, but it’s still got like, an old pubby vibe. It’s not intimidating or anything like that, which I find with lots of bars. Well, not lots of bars but these bars that have bouncers on the doors, they just kind of creep me out. But this place is comfy and it’s cosy and everybody kind of goes there at some point when they’re in Cork.

The Franciscan Well
North Mall. Tel. 021 439 3434
franciscanwellbrewery.com

The Fran Well’s got loads of nice drinks and they’ve got a really nice beer garden. They do Oktoberfest there every year and they’ve got barbeques out the back. It’s a bit out of the way, so you kind of want to go there for more than one pint, but it’s great, like. The Fran Well beers have started to get stocked in a lot of the places around Cork now. I’m not hugely dedicated to any one beer but their stuff is really good, the Rebel Red is a really nice ale. They have lots of special brews on tap and I’m always up for that. I don’t like to leave a bar and wonder what could have been.

SOUNDERIES

The Pavilion, Cork
Huguenot Quarter, Careys Lane.
Tel 021 427 6230
pavilioncork.com

A lot of venues in Cork have closed down recently and other ones are of springing up and taking the weight. The Pavilion has kind of come into its own in recent years. Like, recently a load of Popical Island people came down and did a night, and they just booked Onra to play there in June and they had Shabazz Palaces in the other day and stuff, so there’s always ways of getting the acts in, even though it’s a shame that there isn’t the diversity that there was a year ago. But The Pavilion does great gigs and they accommodate anyone. It’s cool that one night you might have a really big act and it’s 20 quid a ticket and the next night you’ll have a couple of local acts and it’s free in, which sometimes you don’t see so much, a lot of venues ticket everything. The guys who run it, they just do it for the love of the music, they take everyone on, which is great.

The Triskel Christchurch
Tobin St. Tel. 021 427 2022
triskelartscentre.ie

The Triskel have started putting on shows ever since the space there got redeveloped. It’s kind of like the Joinery in Dublin. It’s a public space and it’s all BYOB, so people are really into that whole idea. Joined onto the Triskel is Cafe Gulpd, which puts on DJs as well. That’s a really nice place to go to hear music. It’s like a wine bar but it’s lovely, like. Chilled.

SHOPERIES

Plugd Records
Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin St.
Tel. 021 427 6300
plugdrecords.blogspot.com

This place is great, like. I go in whenever I can. I know Elastic Witch in Dublin opened up recently, but for a while Plugd was the last independent record store in Ireland, which is scary. It’s always going to be on tenterhooks, the existence of the place, but the guys are making it work. They do in-stores as well, I did Record Store Day there last year, and they’ll get acts who are playing there in the night to do a set in the store during the day, which is cool.

The Rave Cave
The English Market, Grand Parade
corkenglishmarket.ie

This is the best place to get all types of Wu Tang clothing and Fubu stuff, and it also services all of your Rory Gallagher T-Shirt needs. They also have do-rags and those giant shirts with like tigers and flames coming up the back and shit. It sells all the stuff you’d wear if you were 14 and smoking hash outside a shopping centre. If you’re into that stuff, you have to check out The Rave Cave.

OTHER ATTRACTIONS

The Barrack St. Challenge
Barrack St.

What’s always good is to check out the whole Barrack St. area. It’s this weird sort of hill/street that starts, essentially, from the old Beamish brewery and goes up the road to the university and people do the pub crawls on it. People love it, because there’s so many weird pubs up there. There’s some really nice pubs and there’s some really dodgy pubs, but if you head up there and find a random one it’s always good fun.

Butter Museum
The Tony O’Reilly Centre, O’Connell Square. Tel. 021 4300 600
corkbutter.museum

I’ve never been here, but it sounds awesome! Apparently butter was a big trading commodity, and Cork was the centre of the butter trade in Europe for a while. It was kind of like a financial hub or something back in the day when they invented butter, I guess, but the Museum is something educational to enjoy in Cork.

TouchWood
Skate Park
Patrick’s Quay. Tel. 021 4518275
touchwoodskatepark.com

Cork’s got two skate parks now, when it used to have none and I used to skateboard all the time. This place is kind of cool. I think it’s all independently run, no council support or anything, so it was a very big deal when that came about. You see loads of kids coming along on their racer scooters and all that kind of shit, doing absolutely nothing on the ramps and getting in your way, but I guess it’s good that they’re actually doing that rather than shooting up crack or whatever they would do otherwise.

THE NEXT BIG THING
Saint Yorda
saintyorda.bandcamp.com

These guys are doing some really nice stuff and they’ve got a lot of character. I’ve seen them a couple of times and sometimes they sound like The xx and then other times they do like, Grouper covers. If I was in a band, I’d want to be in a band that was that kind of mix of fun and interesting, you know? There’s three of them, two guys and a girl, they use a sampler and, I think, a tom drum because every band needs a tom drum these days. It’s more or less a standard band set-up but they’re doing some really leftfield stuff, which is nice to hear.