Hoggy's Taken Away

24th Mar 2011

One of Cork’s much loved chippers Hoggies of South Main Street has closed.

Although a chipper existed on the site long before its arrival in the heart of ‘Olde Corke’ where the King and Queen's castles once stood, Hoggie’s distinguished itself upon opening with its giant ‘Hoggie Burger’ which was enough to feed a small family from Ringaskiddy for two days.

Hoggy singular. Undelining and everything.

The infamous burger contained approximately one calf’s worth of beef sandwiched between two buns and roughly a kilogram of salad. Rumours circling around 2003 suggested that up to 22% of Ireland’s livestock was being consumed by Hoggie customers – something that has yet to be confirmed or denied. Hoggie’s forefathers’ experience as cattle exporters coming in handy.

It wasn’t just the beef and bread that attracted the masses though. There was the healthy salad bit too that made the whole thing guilt free.

When each piece of salad from the Hoggie burger was laid end-to-end the lettuce trail was long enough to stretch around Washington Street, into Grand Parade and back up Castle Street – completing one full loop around the Queen’s Old Castle block. Consumming a full Hoggie burger often took up to 25 minutes - not including pukes.

The much maligned decline of the Hoggie Burger since around 2007 was well recognised locally -  the amount of ‘extras’ in the burger itself were heavily reduced and the formerly delicious slabs of cooked calf that could delay the onset of a hangover by up to 48 hours, didn’t seem to be slapped into those buns with as much fast-love as before. Even the amount of salad therein was barely enough to get you down to the Other Place....  
 

Paradise Place:  the tempting waft of beef drifting up the street tickling the nose hairs of hungry clubbers at 2am made Hoggy's a paradise for many and helped minimise millions of hangovers since it opened 11 years ago. Good spot to see a scrap too.

By 2008 families from Blackpool who used a single Hoggie burger to feed their children for a week began to look to hideous multi national corporations instead. 

Even some of the best Saturday night fights began to occur outside Burger King instead of Hoggies. With Hoggy’s doors shut for the last time the now derelict site lies sandwiched between Fast Al’s and Faster Al’s (when is that burrito place actually open Al?!) like a disappointingly bland pseudo-burger from MacDonald’s or Burger Queen where profits go to some terrible global corporation instead of to the southside.

We salute you Hoggy.  There was nothing like the challenge of mangling one of your enormous burgers on the ESB box across the road while drunken scobey wildlife provided slapless entertainment across the way - always failing to cop the plain clothes Gardaí in the unmarked law car parked outside Diesel.

Thanks for the burgers and the good times. It was worth every future heart attack.