Temple Bar Food Market in Dublin, Ireland

“Live Food – Every Saturday rain, hail or shine,” and good thing! My visit to Dublin was punctuated by frequent showers, and in fact my umbrella broke in the first five minutes I opened it, after a large gust of wind nearly ripped it out of my hands.

After that, I quickly bought a hat. That way, my hair was screwed, but I had instant rain coverage. And afterward, walking around, you could tell how many people were locals by all the hoodies – rain starts to fall, hood up. Rain slows or stops, hood down. Not as many umbrellas fighting against the wind. Sometimes the rain would be so brief that you’d realize you’ve been walking around with your hood up for minutes with no drops. And other times, you’d find yourself standing in a particularly sunny spot, with no clouds directly overhead, getting pelted with big drops of rain.

Ah, Dublin.

But, there was a particularly sunny patch of Dublin we were lucky enough to stumble upon, and that was the Temple Bar Food Market! (PS: Since I work in web stuff, I actually wrote Template and caught it when I re-read the draft – Template Bar, indeed!)

The Temple Bar Food Market is deep in the center of the Temple Bar neighborhood, and we would have missed it if we hadn’t been looking for a certain restaurant on Meeting House Square. The market is every Saturday from 10am – 4.30pm on Meeting House Square.

If I didn’t live in Italy and see this every day, I would have immediately bought some of these lovely olives and mozzarella from The Real Olive Company – I loved the barrels and wooden spoons they used to scoop them out for customers.

Mmmm…garlic. I love the purple ridges on these.

What would an Irish food market be without Irish apples? These are from Llewellyn’s Orchard Produce.

There was a good variety of food and especially of baked goods – if I lived close I would definitely be stopping by for some good brown bread or Irish soda bread from The French Bread Stall.

Some ethnic food, too – at Karuna’s Kitchen there was anything fried and they had about 8 cuisines in a row – panzerotti – Italy, samosa – India, spring roll – China, Kofta – Middle East, Spanakopita – Greece, Croquette – Italy…!  (I do have a weakness for fried stuff – check my own posts about Italian panzerotti, street food in India, or my sweet balls of fried ricotta)

The luck of our timing was we were able to see this roasted pork that had been roasting since 8am…

and was taken out to be eaten right at that moment! (Check out my post on roasted pork, porchetta, that you can find in Italy, complete with head still attached!)

Top that off with some fresh oyster shooters and some conversation from St Martin Shellfish. My brother would have gone crazy at this stand.

Do you shop at a Farmer’s Market? Is there anything you prefer to buy – local, homemade, etc., instead of in the store or doing it yourself?