Dingle Restaurants and Dining

(Dingle, County Kerry, Republic of Ireland)

As a fishing port first and foremost, Dingle offers a good spread of seafood in its restaurants and local eateries. It is also well supplied with pubs - more than 50 of them - from simple traditional shop / pub combinations to large, modern places with proper dining menus.

There are a number of fish and chip shops and cafés around the town centre that stay open in the evening, plus you can also eat in the market. Dining out in Dingle is a pastime and there are all sorts of traditional Irish goodies to be had at reasonable prices.

What to Eat, and Where

Being a coastal town, seafood is especially popular in Dingle, with fresh lobster among the best you will find anywhere in Ireland. Restaurants also offer traditional Irish dishes and dining specialities of the Kerry region, along with British and Euro tastes. Look to Strand Street at the harbour for seafood, along with John Street and Main Street.

Some of the best eating in Dingle can be had in the dozens of pubs, where a traditional Irish stew with Irish soda bread can be washed down with the perfect pint of Guinness. This is perhaps the quintessential Irish meal and the most inexpensive way to enjoy a culinary tradition and be filled at the same time. An especially popular pub is Foxy John's on Main Street. It serves Irish stew, Guinness and other goodies, plus you can even buy hardware there in the daytime!

Fish and chips is also notoriously popular, as with elsewhere in Ireland, and many of the fish and chip shops in Dingle double as cafés, featuring small seating areas and offering something different to more formal dining at local restaurants.

Dingle remains a small and rather traditional corner of Ireland, and you could easily stagger around the various pubs in town during a pub crawl. As you drive around the peninsula, look out for small country pubs to stop at for a hearty Irish stew and an obligatory pint of Guinness.