Kaph is a bit special. It’s a coffee shop, on Drury Street in the centre of Dublin, that feels like a coffee house. It feels clandestine, illicit, the sort of place where you might hatch the idea for a start-up, or plan the final stages of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or hang your art works on the upstairs walls.
Nothing about it is obvious. Sure, there is a shiny machine – a Victoria Arduino Black Eagle – and it sits on a curving counter with some hip young people working behind it, and there are nice things to eat, and there is space upstairs if you want some quiet, and there are cool sounds. But it’s all obliquely arranged and curated, nicely weird.
All of this is important, but it is anchored by coffee making that delivers that narcotic hit, that potent pleasure, in the cup. Their Kaph Blend 36 brings two beans from Guatemala to meet a good pal from Coasta Rica, roasted by the whizzo bean heads from 3Fe, and the result is nirvana, the sort of coffee that has your nerve ends fizzing.
Our mate Kettie, who writes French Foodie in Dublin, called it “a deadly little space”, and that’s spot on: Kaph is deadly, like.
Kaph is a bit special, writes John McKenna
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