Tea and Porridge at Bewleys, Dublin

Three years ago, on my first trip to Ireland, my Aunt Liz fortuitously happened to be in Dublin on the same day that I was passing through. I had spent the night before sleeping on the floor of the Dublin Airport due to a Bon Jovi concert that had flooded the city's hostels (another blog for another day) and had finally caved in my exhaustion and taken a cab to Liz's hotel. This choice, which I considered to be the safer option given my altered state and complete ignorance of the city's layout, turned out to be maybe not so safe when the first words uttered to me by the cabbie after hearing my destination were "The what? Ah so, don't panic. I always find it easier to navigate when I'm drunk."

The hotel turned out to be three blocks away from where I had flagged down the cab, but in making his circuitous and somewhat precarious way there, the cabbie managed to give me the county of origin and dubious etymology of every one of my family names. He, like many Irishmen that I have met since, seemed to have a very negative opinion of Reillys. Though he would not explain why, he threatened to raise my fare for the offense of being descended from one of them until it became clear that I was also part McLoughlin and part Dempsey— the former of which he respected greatly, and the latter of which he had a neutral opinion of as they all lived in county Mayo and were too far away to be of much trouble to anyone. I still don't have any idea where these name-based biases came from, whether they were real, or if he was just drunkenly rambling.

Anyway, I was relieved to arrive intact... albeit €4 poorer. Aunt Liz and I proceeded to walk back in the direction from whence I had come, thus making the cab ride useful purely for anecdotal value. What happened next, however, is the "try" that I have now turned into tradition— porridge and tea at the landmark Bewley's Café on Grafton Street. (Side note: I still can't walk down Grafton St. without singing "On Raglan Road. I try to only do this in my head, but am not always successful.)

Bewley's is a gorgeous, albeit touristy, café. As my cousin Mary put it when she heard that I had been to breakfast there: "Ah, the life o' the idle rich." It always seems to be populated by:
1.) Rich British Businessmen
2.) Grouchy Middle Aged Irishwomen, and
3.) Americans.

Its staff are:
A.) Asians
B.) Polish Girls
C.) Miscellaneous Eastern European Mustachioed Men?

Idiosyncratic multiculturalism aside— it's amazing. There are large velvet upholstered high-backed couchlike things to sit on, and the lighting is dim in a soothing, classy sort of way. The whole back wall is old stained glass windows, which adds to the Old World vibe. Apparently Bewley's was the first Irish tea company to compete with the East India company, and they did rather well at it. Now they serve amazing porridge with brown sugar and cream, not to mention the Irish Breakfast options and the fresh squeezed orange juice that tastes like liquid gold.

I have now been back no less than 5 times. On the list of things to do in Dublin, Bewley's Breakfast rates up with seeing the Book of Kells. (And I am only saying that because I would judge myself if I said that rashers rank higher than an iconic illumated manuscript buried in dirt for over a millenium.)

TRY VERDICT: I have not yet come up with a scale with which to rate my attempts. What criteria are we looking at, here? If success and fail are irrelevant, how am I to proceed? Please respond with suggestions. In the meantime, I recommend Bewley's to any Dublin traveler. And if you have the choice between visiting national treasures and eating breakfast, well... it's a question that I will refer to your own judgment.