Breakfast is a very good thing. There are mornings when it means a fry big enough to require a brief recovery period, and others when it is coffee and a pastry, a bowl of yoghurt, what have you. Eggs and toast remain, as far as I am concerned, difficult to improve on.
Thankfully, Dublin is rather good at breakfast. The streets around Trinity cover most versions of it, from old-school cafés where the food arrives quickly and without ceremony, to places serving shakshuka, sourdough and liberal amounts of tahini.
For students, this range is particularly useful. Sometimes you have €8 and need it to do some serious work. Sometimes you have €25 and want to sit somewhere nice for a while. And sometimes you have €4.60, a questionable morning behind you and twelve minutes before a lecture.
Within a reasonable wander of Trinity, these are the places worth knowing.
McCabe’s Deli
McCabe’s on Tara Street is not particularly interested in reinventing breakfast, thankfully.
This is proper city-centre deli territory: breakfast rolls, hot food and sandwiches served quickly, without any suggestion that your morning meal needs a concept. It is especially useful when there is a lecture approaching and sitting down for eggs Benedict would represent an unrealistic level of optimism about your schedule.
There is something reassuring about breakfast that simply does its job. McCabe’s is filling, straightforward and considerably concerned with whether you have been fed
Student rating: €€
Keogh’s
Keogh’s on Trinity Street has the considerable advantage of being almost impossible to justify not visiting. It is right beside campus, has been there since 1994 and occupies that useful middle ground between bakery, café and reliable Dublin institution.
The breakfast menu covers most eventualities: Full Irish, vegetarian and vegan breakfasts, eggs on toast, pancakes, porridge and breakfast baps. Then there is the counter, which makes maintaining any previously held conviction that you “just want a coffee” considerably more difficult.
It also opens at 6:30am from Monday to Saturday, which is useful for the small section of the population prepared to acknowledge that time of day.
Keogh’s is not a hidden gem, nor does it need to be. Sometimes somewhere is popular because it is convenient, dependable and has very good scones.
Student rating: €€
Eathos
Eathos is for the morning when you would like breakfast to feel slightly more put together than you do.
Its food leans towards the polished end of brunch: good produce, colourful plates, excellent pastries and familiar breakfast ingredients presented with considerably more thought than most of us give them at home. Dishes such as avocado smash and scrambled eggs with Gubbeen chorizo sit alongside the bakery and coffee offering.
It is more expensive than grabbing something from a deli, obviously, but that is not really what Eathos is competing with. This is somewhere to go when breakfast is the plan rather than something you need to acquire before getting somewhere else.
You can leave feeling both well-fed and unusually responsible, even if you also ordered something from the pastry counter.
Student rating: €€€
Tang
Tang is a particularly good option for anyone who has begun to suspect there might be more to breakfast than arranging eggs beside bread in slightly different configurations. We all know about their lunches, but the breakfast is the lesser known beast.
The menu draws heavily on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavours, with dishes including shakshuka, buckwheat pancakes and mushrooms on toast. Everything tends to arrive with herbs, spices, yoghurt, tahini or something else capable of making breakfast feel considerably less predictable.
It is still recognisably brunch, but it offers enough of a departure from the standard Dublin breakfast menu to make it worth seeking out.
The shakshuka is particularly good territory for a slow morning, preferably one where there is nowhere important to be immediately afterwards.
Student rating: €€
O’Donovan Café
O’Donovan’s on Pearse Street is the sort of place every college campus needs nearby.
It is small, straightforward and good at the things that matter: breakfast rolls, sandwiches, paninis and food that arrives quickly without costing an unreasonable amount. Nothing about it is trying especially hard to impress you, which is part of the appeal.
This is particularly useful student breakfast territory. You can walk in hungry, spend relatively little and emerge with something substantial enough to carry you through a morning of lectures.
Get the breakfast roll. There are occasions for careful decision-making and this is not necessarily one of them.
Student rating: €
And, at this point, The Buttery probably requires very little introduction. If proximity is the overriding concern, it remains extremely difficult to argue with breakfast that can be acquired without actually leaving Trinity. Consider this less a recommendation than a reminder.
Breakfast around campus does not need to become an event every time. Sometimes the correct choice is a breakfast roll eaten quickly on the way to class; sometimes it is coffee and pastries with nowhere urgent to be; occasionally it is brunch expensive enough that you decide it counts as both breakfast and lunch.
The useful thing is having all three within walking distance.
