There’s just certain things Dubliners, both native and adopted, should know about this city. Lets start with an obvious one.
The cafe on the top floor of Easons is like a 1913 soup kitchen, only it’s not lines of starving workers before you but shoppers on the verge of collapse. It’s midday, but clearly some of these people have been on the go since the shop doors opened at 9am, and they’re probably a few dodgy jumpers off finishing their Christmas shopping. Stuck for time, we make the call to head elsewhere. The better-half has a bus to catch soon from Parnell Street, but there’s time for a quick coffee. The bus is just too soon to enable a trip to the likes of the Lovinspoon up by Parnell Square, but just long enough to allow for a coffee on O’Connell Street.
Cafe Kylemore is much the same. It’s not really an option to settle on this place with crowds out the door. Town is absolutely mental, it’s like the yanks on what they term ‘Black Friday’, where frenzied showdowns for toasters and DVD players and all sorts of goodies make it to YouTube, showing that mankind isn’t as far removed from the animal kingdom as we sometimes think. People push by and head down Talbot Street carrying more bags than you’d think possible, and across the street at the GPO the preachers continue to preach like this was any other Saturday, everything from repression in China to the word of God, from the need for socialism to the Hare Krishna mantra spouted into megaphones at uncaring shoppers.
The Gresham, we’ll pop in there. Two coffees. They drop them down too, how fancy. There’s two lovely biccies on the side too. Toddy’s Bar and Brasserie, how often I’ve passed it and never walked in. We chat happy, sip the hot goodness and with ten minutes to go until the departing bus, decide it’s time to make a move.
I head back to the barcounter (“You can pay at the end”) and hand over a tenner. She gives me back a single Euro. I instantly feel like a gobshite. At €4.50 a coffee, perhaps this one is best avoided. Yet being told The Gresham is expensive is as unsurprising as being told Copper Face Jacks attracts off-duty Guards and schoolteachers. It’s my own fault. We’ve all heard the little old ladies on Liveline giving out about their lunch in The Gresham, folks take it from me. Just get into the line at Easons and hope for the best.
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
I remember doing a pubcrawl in the 1960s with Harry Owens and a guy from the Gault Millau guidebook. Harry and I were on a Bord Fáilte tab and, as it turned out, so was your man. So we fought like cats and dogs over the bills – all bluster and no consequence.
Gault Millau had just started up and it specialised in two things. Finding new places to recommend and knocking established joints.
After the crawl (and still very sober) we adjourned to the Gresham for coffee and an editorial recap on where we had been.
Yer man was absolutely disgusted with the coffee and the state of the cups in which it was served. But his disgust was not without profit for the guidebook. They described the place as a “cavernous hole” or somesuch. Big knocking job on major icon.
Their general strategy must have worked as the guide is now one of the foremost world restaurant guides. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gault_Millau
No doubt the place has much improved since the 1960s. New crockery and zippier service.
My sympathies on your bill, though. Blame the upward only rents 🙂
the problem here is that you were in a hurry, get one of the couches by the window and spend hours watching the poor oul xmas shoppers struggle around in the wind and rain, best 4.50 you will ever spend
in cahoots on parnell st does a nice coffee if your in a chat mood, friendly staff. the earl on – earl st if its early make there own bread and last time i was in there tea with lyons tea bags, down stairs is surprisingly big, good place to earwig. theres a place in the jevis centre under the stairs that does a nice coffee but make sure you sit in well under the stairs or you’ll be paro with young fella’s down the escalator. theres up stairs in debenhams on henry st. one and a seventh of a floor for people who want to sit down, have a cup of coffee and the bite to eat. the top floor do a good salad its a bit deseptive though. they charge by the weight of the plate but if you get a seat by the window theres a good view of the roof tops of the city or looking down on liffey St.
If yeh think the Gresham is dear don’t go near the Westin. You can apply for a mortgage with the second pot of cha..
I’m an expat with too many years away, and this article sums it all up for me. In 30 years they still have learned nothing in Dear old Dirty when it comes to “restauration”. Charging the type of inflated prices you would nbt see in the Geroges V in Paris or the Ritz in Madrid, upward-only rents cannot justify pricing for something with a ridiculous profit margin (something like 300%)
If people aren’t spending money, you can’t blame them.
An expat! My uncle is an exjoe. He changed his to pat so I suppose you’d call him a newpat. It’s a weird little country really..
Reblogged this on theblogaboutcoffeespots and commented:
Come here to me is without doubt the best blog about Dublin on the internet. from brilliant history articles about this amazing city to posts about Dublin’s graffiti, Ska or punk bands, lanes, etc it has it all with one exception. Coffee shops! This article published in 2011 paints a picture of the day in the life of a Dubliner with a thirst on him and there limited choices when trying to get a cup of tea. Our blog is an attempt to bring to wider attention the fact that Dublin has more to offer the hot beverage consumer than the Kylemore cafe, Easons or the Gresham hotel.
Café shops are popping up everywhere; there has been a quiet revolution in this city the last fe years followed by a quiet counter revolution. Starbucks are taking up position in key parts around the city, you couldn’t look left nor right on Westmorland st without seeing one of their shops. But the independents are holding out, there is a Gramscian like war of position taking place for the shape of our nation’s café culture. Some people say take a stand we say take a seat, sit back, contribute and/or listen. This is a great time for coffee in our society, we are standing in the mansion house in 1922 debating whether to take what were given in the face of superior odds or we are saying let us believe in ourselves, what is good and what we can achieved unfettered, this is a great time that could go either way.
In this blog we will report on some of our favourite spots to drink coffee, if you have any suggestions drop us a comment, hope you enjoy and all the best.