Rosita Boland: I learned to be a better person in Bewley’s
I spent hours in the Dublin cafe, yet no waitress ever tried to clear my table as I sat there
Bewley’s: the Grafton Street coffee shop, with Harry Clarke’s windows, in 2004. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
The closure of Bewley’s Oriental Cafe, on Grafton Street in Dublin, makes me achingly sad. It has closed before for long periods, and reopened with different configurations and different offerings and different experiences, such as having to queue before being directed to a table instead of wandering around and choosing your own. I tolerated all these changes, because what remained was still so special: the wonderful open fires, the elegant red-velvet banquettes, the glorious Harry Clarke windows, with their exotic birds and butterflies.
The knowledge that this closure is permanent, because of a combination of high rent and the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, including the need for social distancing in the near future, as well as whatever other economic factors are playing out, is horrible. We saw what happened to the Bewley’s on Westmoreland Street, not far away, when that closed, in 2004. The site turned into a mash-up of a Starbucks cafe, a TGI Fridays restaurant and the Fleet Street Hotel.