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20th December 2016
12:10am GMT
My day starts at 7am every morning when the dreaded alarm clock goes off, but it actually gains momentum at 8.32am when I'm at my desk with coffee in hand. I get mine in the Fumbally (which I'd rate as the second best coffee in Dublin these days after 3Fe) and those 10 minutes sipping it while reading the Guardian, before the real work starts, are the highlight of my day. The moment I start sipping the deep rich liquid I can feel it coursing through my veins, as the body starts kicks into life. Its like an old motorbike that you use the kickstand for and although in doubt, that smooth purr of the engine always kicks in.
I'll usually have a second cup to negate the post lunch slump at about 3 - and most days that'll do me (the logic being that anymore will do some damage to the body in the long run). There are occasions, however, when my coffee addiction doesn't fit so neatly into the 9-5 mould, when I want to drink coffee in the evening. What I've noticed is that when I do want to drink coffee after 5pm it is usually really shit quality. There are a couple of places that do it later (Fallon and Byrne, Accents and the 24 hour Bukys on St Stephens Green) but the simple fact is that come 5 bells, the quality of the coffee I can buy diminishes rapidly.
I've always found this very unfair for people who work different hours. Say a barman starting his shift at 5 in the evening or a nurse on night duty. Yes it is a bit of a first world problem, but there is a huge market there for people who want to go for a good coffee in the evening in Dublin. The fear probably comes from cafe owners thinking people would worry about not sleeping, and forgo caffeine after 5pm and while that is true for many, there would still be huge demand for a late coffee. Maybe all the cafe owners are off waxing their beards, servicing their fixies, talking about their new coffee grinders in the evenings - and god forbid they actually have a life to lead, but they're the ones to blame here. They are the ones who've started setting the bar so high with the coffee we drink that anything else feels substandard.
Of course you can make it at home, but just like cooking a curry yourself it'll always be a decent effort but never as good as what you get when the pros make it. I guess it's just like any other drug, the demand has been created by a high quality product and now all I'm asking for is to be able to get my fix after 5pm in the evening. Somebody sort it out please. Dublin needs you.
