Recently my part-time job has taken me up to and back down from a spot just outside Drogheda more times than a lift in a high-rise office block yo-yo’s between floors on a busy day. By the by, in case you don’t know, Drogheda is a port town situated roughly fifty-five kilometres north of Dublin.
Category Archives: Coffee
Drogheda: Brown Hound Bakery
Filed under Cake, Coffee, Restaurants/Cafés
Coffee Chez Max
I am back slightly later than I said I would be. Mea culpa!
The Tuesday before last, the 14th July, was the French National Day: La Jour de Bastille. Its celebration is many degrees different from St Patrick’s Day. Whereas our national day is: party central, a riot of all things green, and, for some, an excuse for a monumental piss-up; Bastille Day is, in contrast, celebrated in a more sombre way, the highlight being a carefully curated set piece military parade down the Champ Elysees.
Filed under Celebrations, Coffee, Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés
Dublin: The Cross Café
Painting by John Boyd
When I first heard about the Cross Café, a myriad of months ago, I thought that it sounded ‘just so’ and exactly the type of place I would like. At the time I mentally filed its name and location thinking I really must visit it some time soon. Then the weeks leapfrogged into months and the months into almost a year so I only got to try the Cross Café a few weeks ago. I was not disappointed: in an ideal world it’s the sort of café that every neighbourhood should have.
Filed under Coffee, Dublin, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés
Retail Therapy of the Spending Kind and Some Cake
Feeling in need of something to cheer me up I headed to the city centre for a spot of retail therapy. I say of the spending kind because as often as not I am as happy to browse as I am to buy.
Filed under Cake, Coffee, Dublin, Fashion, Restaurants/Cafés, Shops/Shopping
Breakfast at Brother Hubbard
I had heard a lot about Brother Hubbard a café on Dublin’s Capel Street, all of it good, but I had not sampled even a cup of coffee there before this weekend
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés
Coutume Café: Coffee and Cake in Paris
‘Let them eat cake’ said Marie Antoinette. Allegedly. Allegedly, because according to Wiki and to her biographer Antonia Fraser she never uttered those immortal words.
Filed under Cake, Coffee, Paris, Restaurants/Cafés
The Delgany
If you are going to write a blog post about a food establishment it is, I think, a tad unfair to rock up to check it out just as it opens. But that’s exactly what I did this week when, having spotted on Twitter some details of a new food venture in County Wicklow, I visited ‘The Delgany’ for breakfast in its first week of trading. Twice!
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés
Coffee in Milan: Peck
It is a few years since I was last in Milan and then only for a short stay so I only remembered, and just in a gossamer-fine way, some of the city’s most famous set pieces: The Duomo, La Scala and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle. As I was unsure of how to negotiate the city’s labyrinth of streets and as I was heading into Milan for just a day from my base on the shores of scenic Lake Como I thought that it was best to decide in advance exactly where I was going so I could make the optimum use of my time and to avoid ambulating around the city like an aimlessly spinning top.
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Kennedy’s of Enniskerry
Kennedy’s of Enniskerry is, as you might expect, in Enniskerry. Enniskerry is an enchanting village at the foot of a valley in Wicklow, a county immediately south of Dublin, that was original built as the estate village for the nearby Palladian Powerscourt House: Kennedy’s is a charming café on Church Hill right in the heart of the village.
Filed under Coffee, Ireland, Restaurants/Cafés
Coffee in London: Ottolenghi
Ottolenghi is by now a bit of a culinary cliché. I don’t mean that in any bad way – just that it has been so talked and written about that it seems as familiar as soft falling rain. In case you haven’t heard of it, the phenomena that is Ottolenghi is a set of four food shops in central London run by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The shops are in Islington, Belgravia, Notting Hill and Kensington; the Islington branch is also a full restaurant, the Belgravia and Notting Hill branches have small communal eating-in areas at the back of the shops and Kensington which is the smallest shop serves take-out food only.
Filed under Coffee, Food/Wine, London, Restaurants/Cafés, Travel
Just Add Attitude 