Eating and drinking in Wicklow Town

Wicklow is a county town, not a food town, and it is more useful to say that plainly than to oversell seven venues. What it has is a small, mostly independent set of places where the same people eat every week, one proper harbour-front restaurant, a bakery worth crossing town for, and pub opening days that will catch you out if you assume an Irish pub opens seven days. Here is how it actually works.

The harbour room

Blue Seafood and Bistro sits on the South Quay looking out over Wicklow Harbour and is the town's destination dining room. Seafood is the point, on a coast where the fishing fleet is tied up outside the window, though the menu runs wider than fish. It is a small room in a town without many rooms like it, and the standing advice from every source, including Wicklow Town's own tourism site, is to book, particularly at weekends and through the summer. Reservations are taken by phone on 0404 67286 rather than online.

The alternative for a sit-down dinner without walking down to the water is Sparrow's Nest on Market Square, beside the Billy Byrne statue, a small independent kitchen doing lunch and dinner with a seafood leaning under head chef Tomasz. Booking is again by phone.

The bridge

Two places sit at the bridge over the Vartry and both trade on the same piece of local history. Robert Halpin, the Wicklow man who commanded Brunel's Great Eastern and laid something like 26,000 miles of submarine telegraph cable, grew up above his parents' dockside tavern here, the Bridge House.

The Bridge Tavern is the direct descendant of that address and the town's main all-rounder: a bar, a lounge, a snug and a riverside terrace, food from breakfast through to dinner every day, rooms upstairs, and a Sunday roast with a genuine local reputation. Tables can be booked through OpenTable, which makes it the one place in town you can reserve without picking up the phone.

Halpin's Bridge Cafe and Bistro, a few steps away, is the daytime room. It opened in 2009 and has been run since 2018 by Steven and Eilish Rawson and their four daughters, and the trade is built on an all-day breakfast that people here will name without being asked. Specialty coffee, a bistro menu, indoor and outdoor seating, takeaway, and no booking required.

The pubs, and the days they are shut

Phil's of Wicklow Town, which most locals still call Phil Healy's, has been on Fitzwilliam Square since 1861 and is the town's late house. Gastropub food in the evenings, sport on the screens, private dining upstairs, and on a Saturday a DJ and a licence that runs to half past two in the morning, which makes it the only real late bar in the area. It is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Write that down. Opening Wednesday to Thursday from 5pm, Friday from 4pm, Saturday from noon and Sunday from noon.

The Brass Fox is on Leitrim Place at the northern edge of the centre, two minutes from the Murrough, which makes it the obvious end point for that walk. It is a modern gastropub rather than an old snug, doing breakfast through to steak and seafood with cocktails. A few doors up, under the same ownership, the Grey Dog runs 9am to 9pm seven days with pizza, sandwiches, chicken, tacos and pasta, plus collection and delivery. In a town where several kitchens close early in the week, a place open every day from breakfast to evening earns its place.

Wicklow's older pubs are worth a look even if you are only having a pint: the Mariner on Main Street, O'Shea's Corner on Abbey Street, Ta Se's off Market Square and Fitzpatrick's are all still trading as local bars rather than as themed rooms.

Bread, beer and vegetables

The Firehouse Bakery started in Delgany up the coast and has a branch on Abbey Street here, open 8.30am to 4pm seven days. Crusty sourdoughs and slow-proved yeasted breads out of a wood-fired oven that also turns out pizza and slow-cooked meats. It is the reliable early opening in town and the right stop before a walk.

The Great Eastern Brewing Co. is a nano-brewery on the South Quay, and the naming is the local joke made permanent: it is called after Halpin's ship and the beers are called Low Quay, Old Pier, Harbour Haze, Half Mast and Dubh na Feile. It is genuinely in the town, which is worth saying in a county where the larger breweries carry a Wicklow name but sit elsewhere. No public taproom is confirmed, so ask before turning up expecting one.

Five minutes uphill from Market Square, on the same hill as the gaol, An Tairseach is a seventy-acre organic farm and ecology centre run by the Dominican Sisters, certified organic since 2006, with a farm shop selling its own vegetables and fruit, pork and beef raised on the farm, honey from its own eight hives and weekly vegetable boxes. If you are self-catering, this is the best shopping in the town by a distance.

The short version

Book Blue for dinner. Eat breakfast at Halpin's or the Firehouse. Drink at the Bridge Tavern or Phil's, and check the day of the week before you rely on Phil's. Finish a Murrough walk at the Brass Fox. Buy your bread on Abbey Street and your vegetables on Kilmantin Hill.