laine, my love would present a challenge to Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.
In his role as chief space-shifter in estate agency Hook, Lyon & Sinker, Ross would be pushed to his lapels to describe the room that laine, my love, occupies at the railway station end of Talbot Street.
Ross would probably come up with something like: “Glass-encased studio room with street frontage, benefitting from acres of natural light thanks to the room’s smart switch around the corner onto Joyce’s Walk, off the main thoroughfare of one of Dublin’s leading commercial avenues. Significant footfall in a promising and up-and-coming commercial district adjacent to the tony precinct of the IFSC”.
That’s right. laine, my love is basically a corridor, under the railway bridge, at the wrong end of Talbot Street.
It’s kinda perfect.
Ferg Brown, the coffee roaster and barista who set up l,ml obviously likes strange spaces. He used to run Roasted Brown, upstairs in the Filmbase on Curved Street in Temple Bar, where he basically had an open plan room with a few tables and couches in between a bunch of offices and studios.
But what Mr Brown had then, and has now, is demon coffee. He has created his own roastery out in Delgany, in County Wicklow, and Mr Brown’s beans are pure gold. He could set up a cardboard box under the bridge on the Royal Canal and we would go there to have a v-60 and a pork and leek sausage with brown sauce for our breakfast.
Mr Brown also has really, really great staff, the sort of cheery and charming young folk who know their job lickety-split, and who make you happy just because they haven’t emigrated to Montreal and are here in Dublin making sure you get the best cup of coffee imaginable.
Kinda perfect.
38 Talbot Street, Dublin 1
John McKenna
