Irish cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with the island of Ireland. It has developed from antiquity through centuries of social and political change and the mixing of different cultures, predominantly with those from nearby Britain and other European regions. The cuisine is founded upon the crops and animals farmed in its temperate climate and the abundance of fresh fish and seafood from the surrounding waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Chowder, for example, is popular around the coasts. Herbs and spices traditionally used in Irish cuisine include bay leaves, black pepper, caraway seeds, chives, dill, horseradish, mustard seeds, parsley, ramsons (wild garlic), rosemary, sage and thyme.

The development of Irish cuisine was altered greatly by the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which introduced a new agro-alimentary system of intensive grain-based agriculture and led to large areas of land being turned over to grain production. The rise of a commercial market in grain and meat altered the diet of the Irish populace by redirecting traditionally consumed products (such as beef) abroad as cash crops instead. Consequently, potatoes were widely adopted in the 18th century and essentially became the main crop that the Irish working class (which formed a majority of the population) could afford.

By the 21st century, much traditional Irish cuisine was being revived. Representative dishes include Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, brown bread (as it is referred to in the south) or soda bread (predominantly used in Ulster), coddle, and colcannon.

There are many references to food and drink in Irish mythology and early Irish literature, such as the tale of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge. They contain many references to banquets involving the heroes' portion and meat cooked in cauldrons and on spits.

Prior to the Neolithic period in Ireland and advances in farming technology, archaeological evidence such as the discovery of stone tools, bone assemblages, archeobotanical evidence, isotopic analysis of human skeletal remains, and dental erosion on the remains of human teeth indicate the Mesolithic Irish were a hunter-gatherer society that ate a diet of varied floral and faunal sources. Discoveries of food byproducts such as bone fragments and sea shells are key indicators of the dietary habits of the Mesolithic Irish, as immediate food products have long since decomposed —especially in the presence of Ireland's largely acidic soils. However, available archeological evidence of food remains, together with discoveries of Mesolithic food-harvesting tools and the relationship of local environments with settlement sites, provide an understanding of what may have eaten. Settlement sites, in particular, have supported notable insight into the dietary habits of the Mesolithic Irish. For example, the proximity of Mesolithic settlements to water systems point to groups or individuals who ate marine species. The predominant location of Mesolithic Irish settlements are close to water systems, and therefore suggests a diet rich in vegetation, marine life, and smaller mammals, as distinct from their British and Native American contemporaries whose settlements further inland influenced a diet more substantive with meat. For example, deer features minimally in archeological discoveries, thought to be particularly due to the infrequent presence of deer along coastal regions, bays, and estuaries.

The deliberate positioning of such settlements also suggests a cultural preference for particular foods. Also unique to settlements positioned close to water systems are large mounds of bivalve shells known as middens, which provide concrete evidence that shellfish played a role in the dietary practices of the Mesolithic Irish. Shell middens are frequent Mesolithic discoveries in Ireland, which for their majority, were predominantly composed of oyster and limpet shells. The coastal town name of Sligo (in Irish Sligeach) which means "abounding in shells", references the area's historic plenitude of shellfish in the river and its estuary, as well as the middens common to the area.

Additionally, Ireland's position as an island and thus the unique composition of biodiversity and geography suggests its Mesolithic people enjoyed a somewhat dissimilar diet to their proximal contemporaries. For example, prehistoric Ireland's paucity of small mammals, and its absences of species important to other Mesolithic communities, such as red deer, wild cow, and elk would have contributed to unique dietary habits and nutritional standards. The persistent evidence of certain species, such as boar in contrast with the scarcity and/or uncooked nature of other animal remains such as bear and birds of prey (remains of which have been found in Mesolithic bone assemblages, but are otherwise absent in isotopic analysis of human bones) suggests a particular understanding of certain animals as sources of food, others that served symbolic or medicinal purposes (as they were in other parts of Europe), while others still, such as dog, which are not supposed to have been consumed at all.

Due to Ireland's geography and the locations of Mesolithic settlements, the variety of food sources available to the Mesolithic Irish was consequently unique. Outside of boar, large predators including the wolf, the brown bear, and lynx are scarce in archaeological assemblages, and understood to have been generally avoided as a source of food, as they were in most of contemporary Mesolithic Europe. Likewise, while cereals were unlikely to have been yet consumed due to the processing required to make them digestible, fungi, roots, leaves, stems, flowers, nuts, seeds, berries and fruits were all otherwise simple to harvest and eat and would have substantiated the Mesolithic diet with nutritional variety and a diversity of flavour. Honeybees, and their honey, were probably not present in Mesolithic Ireland.