Eating out in Monaghan
Monaghan feeds a lot of people who are passing through, so the town centre has more cafes and bar food than its population would suggest. What it does not have is much fine dining. For that you go out to Glaslough or south to Carrickmacross.
Coffee and lunch
Grahams of Monaghan on Dublin Street is a bakery and shop with a cafe attached, and it is the busiest lunch spot in town. Their own pastry counter is the reason. Expect a queue at half twelve.
Around the four squares there is a run of independent coffee places that turn over reasonably often, which is the way of it in a small town. Church Square and Dublin Street are where to look. Most do breakfast into mid afternoon and close before the evening.
The farmers market in Church Square is the other option for a weekday lunch, with a few regular food trucks alongside the produce stalls.
Pubs that do food
The Squealing Pig on Dublin Street is the best known bar and restaurant in the centre, busy in the evenings and doing full meals rather than just bar snacks. It is the default answer when someone in Monaghan is asked where to eat.
Beyond that, several of the town’s pubs serve food at lunchtime and stop in the afternoon. Monaghan keeps a good number of genuine old bars, the kind with a front room and not much decor, and a few of them are worth a visit for the room alone even if you only want a pint.
Hotel restaurants
Both the Four Seasons at Coolshannagh and the Hillgrove on the Old Armagh Road serve non residents, and both are reliable if unexciting. The Four Seasons runs a grill and a bar menu. The Hillgrove is geared to large groups, so it is a better bet midweek than on a Saturday.
The Westenra Arms on the Diamond does bar food through the day and is the most convenient sit down meal if you are in the town centre without a car.
Worth the drive
Snaffles at Castle Leslie in Glaslough is the closest thing to a destination restaurant in this part of the county, about fifteen minutes out. Book ahead.
South of here, Carrickmacross has the county’s best regarded restaurant kitchen, roughly half an hour down the N2.
Takeaway and late
Monaghan has the full range of takeaways you would expect, concentrated on Dublin Street and Glaslough Street, and they run later than the restaurants. On a Sunday evening in a border town, a takeaway is often the only thing still serving after eight, so plan accordingly if you are arriving late.
A note on this list
Restaurants close and change hands, particularly in towns this size, and a guide that lists twenty places is usually a guide that is wrong about five of them. The places named here were trading in July 2026 and all have a web presence you can check before you travel. If you find something here has shut, it has shut.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.