There are catch-ups, and then there are proper catch-ups. The latter cannot always be conducted standing outside the Arts Block between lectures, nor over a coffee you have eleven minutes to drink, although I am a very slow coffee drinker. A proper catch-up requires time. Ideally, it also requires a table, something decent to eat or drink, and a room quiet enough that neither person has to spend the afternoon saying “sorry, what?”
This is harder to find in Dublin than it sounds. Some cafés seem actively designed to remind you that somebody else would quite like your chair. Restaurants want their tables back. Pubs can make conversation an exercise in lip reading come seven o’clock. Then there are the places where sitting for an hour somehow turns into three, which is exactly what we are after.
So, for the friend you have been meaning to see for six weeks, or the “quick coffee” that everyone involved knows will not be quick, these are some of the best places around Trinity to actually catch up.
White Rabbit
White Rabbit, certainly not unheard of, is near the end of Nassau Street, winning first on geography. You can leave Trinity and be there before you have had enough time to reconsider the social engagement entirely.
It is a small, unfussy café. There is none of the strange pressure to understand the concept before ordering a coffee. The counter is filled with sandwiches, wraps, salads, and sweet things; you choose something, sit down if you can get a seat, and get on with the important business of chit chat. The food is straightforward but reliably good, particularly if what you want is lunch rather than a full sit-down meal. The obvious drawback is space. White Rabbit works best outside the lunchtime rush, when it feels cosy rather than crowded. At peak Nassau Street hours, lingering over an empty cup can start to feel less relaxed. So this spot is best for your more obscure timeslot between lectures. Cheap and cheerful, I’m going to lower my voice when I tell you about their cookie that was €2 last I checked, only because I want two to be left when I arrive with my catch-ups!
Honey Truffle
Pearse Street has the advantage of feeling removed from the Grafton Street orbit while still being close enough to campus to remain practical. Honey Truffle sits neatly in that category.
This is the place for somebody you want to see properly, but with whom you do not need to perform an elaborate lunch outing. The counter is the main attraction with sandwiches, salads, and baked goods that have plenty of thought put into them. Honey Truffle has been praised since opening for the freshness and presentation of its food, and it remains particularly well suited to breakfast and lunch.
The atmosphere is casual and daytime-ish, and the seating makes more sense for a conversation than for setting up camp with your entire academic life spread across the table. It can get busy around lunch, so timing matters here too.
Go for the food as much as the catch-up. A mediocre sandwich can be forgiven when you are distracted by good gossip, but thankfully that should not be necessary.
Shoe Lane
Shoe Lane on Tara Street is a particularly useful answer. It is close to Trinity without being on one of the obvious café strips, and its upstairs seating gives it the slightly hidden quality that a good catch-up spot needs. Trinity students have previously singled it out precisely for being relatively quiet, and having an upstairs space where it is possible to settle in for a while.
The coffee is the reason to come even without the conversation. This is more of a coffee shop than lunch destination, so it can be a spur of the moment catch-up with an old or new friend.
Its greatest advantage is that it is lingerable. There are places where twenty minutes feels like an hour because you are hyper-aware of the queue behind you. Shoe Lane generally lends itself better to forgetting what time it is.
Brindle
Brindle is the loosest interpretation of “around Trinity” on this list. At 34 Lennox Street, it requires an actual walk towards Portobello rather than a quick escape through one of Trinity’s gates. But perhaps that is part of the point.
Brindle operates as both coffee shop and wine spot, which makes it very well suited to the catch-up with no clear finishing time. Meet in the afternoon to order a coffee and get a bit of your college work done together, stay considerably longer than intended, and perhaps some wine will start to call your name.
The room has the polished-but-relaxed feeling that many Dublin cafés attempt and fewer quite achieve. It feels like somewhere to be rather than somewhere to pass through. The product backs that atmosphere up, this is not a case of forgiving an average drink because the interiors are nice.
It is probably less suited to the spontaneous “are you free after class?” than to the catch-up you have actually put in the calendar. The extra walk makes it a destination, which is sometimes exactly what you need when the point is to spend proper time with someone.
Wall & Keogh
Wall & Keogh is another one that asks you to venture beyond the immediate Trinity radius, this time towards South Richmond Street. In return, you get a café built around something other than Dublin’s endless pursuit of the oat flat white.
Tea is the draw. Wall & Keogh specialises in loose-leaf teas, which immediately gives a catch-up a different rhythm. Coffee there is very good too, one of my favorite cups in the city at the moment. I do feel that coffee has an element of efficiency attached to it though, where tea in a pot is inviting some more minutes to the conversation.
The space has a relaxed, slightly eclectic quality that works well for exactly that. It is a particularly good option if you are tired of the increasingly interchangeable pale wood, concrete and tiny stool school of café design.
It is also reasonably priced, compared with turning the same afternoon into lunch or drinks. For a long conversation where the setting matters but the budget does too, there is a lot to recommend.
Verdict
The best catch-up spots are usually the ones that do not make you feel like you should be moving on. Good coffee or food helps, obviously, but so do a decent chair, manageable noise, and enough time to let the conversation run on a bit. Around Trinity, these are the places I would choose when “quick coffee” is probably not going to be quick.
