{"id":173177,"date":"2025-12-03T16:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/173177\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T16:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T16:55:08","slug":"end-of-an-era-as-corks-iconic-quay-co-op-restaurant-to-close-after-44-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/173177\/","title":{"rendered":"End of an era as Cork’s iconic Quay Co-op restaurant to close after 44 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cork\u2019s legendary Quay Co-Op vegetarian restaurant is shutting up shop for good after 44 years, ending one of the longest-running stories in Irish hospitality.<\/p>\n

The iconic location has also served as HQ for multiple social justice campaigns over the decades and will be taken over by Cork-based My Goodness Food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe age of the ten Co-Op members was the big thing,\u201d said Arthur Leahy of the Quay Co-Op, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe restaurant has been going in some form or other since 1982 \u2014 prior to closing it was the second oldest restaurant in Cork \u2014 and to run a good restaurant you need somebody who is committed to food and we no longer have that kind of energy or commitment or those skills from the membership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 1982 as a community collective effort of feminist, lesbian and gay, environmental and other alternative groups and individuals, the Quay Co-Op provided a base for social movements including gay rights, the 1983 anti-abortion amendment, the Criminal Justice Bill and the first Divorce Referendum.<\/p>\n

In order to financially support the collective project, a food co-op, shop and restaurant were added on but soon developed a life of their own, especially the restaurant, which introduced generations of Corkonians to vegetarian food, then mostly a scoffed-at novelty.<\/p>\n

Many fans, however, will be delighted to hear that nationally-renowned vegan enterprise My Goodness Food is to take over the restaurant space, with the co-operative continuing to run the shop, bakery and bookshop as separate enterprises.<\/p>\n

\"AnAn emotional moment as Arthur Leahy and Virginia O\u2019Gara embrace outside the Quay Co-Op. Picture: Chani Anderson.<\/p>\n

There were multiple applications to take on the restaurant, which had to remain vegetarian, a non-negotiable for the Co-Op members.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Goodness have a very strong ethic around food \u2014 stronger even than the Co-Op had,\u201d said Arthur. \u201cTheir food is actually vegan and they operate a very supportive culture for their own workers and the local farmers and producers they source from.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Virginia O\u2019Gara, co-founder of My Goodness Food, which operates at markets and festivals around Cork and Ireland and has an outlet in Cork\u2019s English Market, had been back in the US to be with her dying father when Arthur approached her husband Donal to see if My Goodness would be interested in taking over the restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty good with where we are right now as a business, doing what we want to do and the way we want to do it,\u201d said Virginia.<\/p>\n

\n It’s ethical, paying better than living wage, working towards being zero waste, but an opportunity like this only comes around maybe once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, so we had to say yes.\n <\/p>\n

Virginia grew up in Dallas, Texas and met Donal O\u2019Gara, from Donegal, when she came to study permaculture at Kinsale Community College in 2006. She is now Ireland\u2019s leading vegan chef.<\/p>\n

Arthur and the members were well-acquainted with My Goodness from its early days when My Goodness ran the cafe in The Other Place LGBT Community Centre, an offshoot of the Quay Co-Op, in Cork city, until the centre closed permanently after a fire in 2015.<\/p>\n

\"DonalDonal O\u2019Gara, Arthur Leahy and Virginia O\u2019Gara discuss festive reopening plans at the Quay Co-Op restaurant on Sullivan\u2019s Quay. Picture: Chani Anderson.<\/p>\n

This previous relationship meant Arthur and the members were aware of how much their respective ethics and politics aligned, not just on food but around social justice and activist campaigning, with the Co-Op the current centre for Cork\u2019s Palestine solidarity campaigning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked around to see if we could find someone to carry on the tradition of the place and My Goodness were the most suitable candidates,\u201d said Arthur.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always stuck with vegetarian and we wanted somebody that would fit in with the aspirations of the Co-Op as also represented by the shop and the book shop, where I\u2019ve \u2018retired\u2019 to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Virgina said: \u201cWhen we ran The Other Place cafe we were one small part of a larger group of activists, artists, empaths and outsiders working together and that\u2019s where I feel at home, and the Co-Op has always been that for me. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn food terms, we are a good fit for the Co-Op restaurant space, but we are the ones who also understand that space is more than just a cafe \u2014 it\u2019s always been that and always needs to remain as that to honour the legacy of what the co-op and all its community have created.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n I love that place and I know that it has to survive. It’s our responsibility to say yes more than anything else. It would be irresponsible not to.\n <\/p>\n

My Goodness Food will begin the new era on Sullivan\u2019s Quay with a pop-up restaurant opening on December 14, running until Christmas and they will then close for a period before opening fully in the new year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cork\u2019s legendary Quay Co-Op vegetarian restaurant is shutting up shop for good after 44 years, ending one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,48520],"class_list":{"0":"post-173177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-restaurant-reviews-wine-darina-allen-currabinny-food-news-the-menu-taste-tests"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}