Best coffee shop in Ireland

*** OT rant warning ***

I must say as a coffee professional I find it scary how many people express a preference for Starbucks. They deliberately serve dumbed-down, over-roasted coffee, encourage the addition of sugary cr*p (take a look at the ingredients lists on those syrups - makes me shudder) to a drink that doesn't need it, and generally go out of their way to standardize an item that by its nature should show regional variations.

They remove virtually all of the skill element from the making of coffee by using fully automated machines, which may cut out the worst shots but also makes achieving the best impossible. Their beans are mass-roasted long before they are used, which has a demonstrably negative effect on the flavour. They steam milk for lattes/cappuccinos in vast quantities when this is far better when done in smaller batches... I could go on.

And through market dominance alongside a process of mass-marketing, they have convinced people that all this amounts to good coffee. Where does tha leave those of us who try to provide quality individual coffee to the discerning drinker? Just try asking your local *$ barista to make you a latte the way YOU like it. More likely than not they'll tell you the machine can't do that, or they haven't been trained to do that, or they're under strict orders to do it the standard *$ way... The more people think that *$ = good coffee, and the more they come to expect to be served a standardized brew that tastes like *$ dishwater everywhere they go, the more they are likely to reject quality coffee served up by independents.

And that's without even mentioning their employment and purchasing practices.

Now I know there's no accounting for taste, and everyone is entitled to their view, but I'm not sure if people realize that *$ really are the Microsoft of the coffee world. When it comes right down to it, what they offer has almost nothing to do with quality and everything to do with standardization. If you want a uniform world where you can get the same drink everywhere you go from Auckland to Amsterdam, go ahead and vote for Starbucks.

Then again, maybe it's just me who doesn't like them.

*** OT rant ends ***

Dunne & Crescenzi or Cafe Napoli, I'm not a Connoisseur so the safest option for me is to assume that the Italians know what they're about. Napoli for coffee on the run but Crescenzi is a nice place to sit and contemplate life.


Starbucks, urgh!