`They smell truly wonderful," I say to Tanya, who is manning the Killaloe deli van at the Limerick market, busy turning over slender frankfurters on her grill. "They taste even better!" she replies, "and the minute there is a bit of a cold snap, the people here go mad for them."
"Make sure you mention the name: O'Brien's Fresh Periwinkles from Kilkee," hollers O'Brien, the periwinkle man from Kilkee, as I examine his buckets of periwinkles. At one of the gates which lead in to the inner enclosure of the Limerick market, Joe from Lyracrumpane, Co Kerry, is selling booklets about the village.
"I think with President Clinton's visit, the Limerick people realised just what they had in the city," says Joe.
This sounds like a fair enough assessment of a city which has been rejuvenated in recent years.
Joe is not totally disinterested. In fact, he is the Mayor of Limerick. Not that this has stopped him from coming to the market, where he has been selling his bits and bobs for the best part of 20 years. "There was a falling off in the 1970s," he says, "but with the new development, the interest is coming back."
The interest is coming back with a bang. Visiting the Limerick market years ago was a depressing experience, a place where you were more likely to get a high-quality, reconditioned hubcap than something decent to eat (the hubcaps are still being sold, mind you, along with penny and exquisitely scratched Big Tom records).
But along with all that, you can now suddenly find farmhouse cheese from Peter Nibbering, who makes the gouda-style Kilshanny cheeses (and who has been a stalwart of the market for some years).
There are pristine pates and sea vegetables from Olivier Beaujouan, who tours the markets throughout the country. There is fresh apple juice, Killaloe deli meats, and even a chilli seller: Theresa Storey had sweet banana chilli, ancho chillies and Hungarian wax chillies for sale the Saturday I was there.
At the Greenacres stall, Marie Murphy is selling cheeses I have neither seen nor heard of before. "Locals make them for me, and it's an attraction to have something different," she says, obstinately refusing to reveal her sources to me, but offering multiple tastes of intriguing and delicious cheeses.
The Real Olive Co is, as with all its outlets, besieged by customers, the bottles of Killowen Orchard Apple juice are vanishing at a rate of knots, the queue for Cafe Lazio's fish and chips seems eternal, and the energy and bustle of the morning is enchanting.
Arthur Caball is manning the Caragh Catering bread stall, with handsome soda breads and white breads, having a chat with Brendan Woods, from the Chamber of Commerce. "We won our first award for the market development under the Architectural Heritage Conservation Award scheme," says Brendan proudly, "and there were only 48 awards given out of 800 entries. The most recent award was from the RAI. When everything is finished, the area will be known as the Market Quarter."
Round the corner, Arthur Caball's son-in-law, Michael Moore, is hard at work in The Bread Barn, one of the first tenants of the new development. There are apple tarts and Dutch apple pies for sale, pear and almond tart, black cherry clafoutis and fine three-chocolate gateaux.
Beside him, Patrick Rahilly is intensely working on early lunches in the Milk Market Cafe, which the kitchen services: lamb's liver with red wine vinegar and sticky onions; seafood cakes with coriander cream and salsa; a fine smoked bacon and red lentil soup, so good that my daughter asks for a second bowl.
We enjoy a vegetarian risotto with lovely sweet roasted tomatoes and a balsamic dressing, moulded in a circle on the plate and thus closer in nature to a pilaf than a risotto, and excellent grilled prawns served with spicy potatoes.
The upstairs room in the restored Georgian building of the Milk Market Cafe is light and bright and lovely, and as the anchor tenant of the project, Kay Caball hopes that the renaissance of the market will steadily continue. She has long been a pivotal figure in Limerick's expanding food culture, and the Milk Market Cafe is a brave venture which, it seems to me, is proving very successful. She attributes the upsurge in interest in food in Limerick to a number of factors.
"The university brought in people who had travelled and cared about food, Dell has been responsible for thousands of jobs, and the Revenue Commissioners [offices] arrived five years ago. And, of course, the tax breaks on urban development have been the engine that has driven the market."
Whatever the reasons, the simple fact is that Limerick is on the move.