← Back to globe
Market Stall · Seaweed and Shellfish

Laverbread with Cockles

Laverbread with Cockles — street food from Wales, United Kingdom
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: ceridwen / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

It's nicknamed 'Welsh caviar,' but laverbread isn't bread at all — it's a dark, slick paste made from boiled seaweed.

Laver seaweed is boiled for hours until it collapses into a soft, olive-black puree, then traditionally rolled in oatmeal and fried into little cakes, often served alongside cockles gathered from the Gower and Penclawdd sands. Swansea and Cardiff market stalls sell both side by side.

Why it's made this way: Coastal Welsh communities have gathered and cooked laver for centuries, turning a free, foraged shoreline resource into a distinctive local staple.
Read it in context →

More from United Kingdom

Fish and Chips Cornish Pasty Scotch Egg Jacket Potato Irn-Bru Deep-Fried Mars Bar
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.