Grá The Coffee Bar

It’s the quiet pursuit of both excellence and aesthetics, right across every little thing they do, that impresses everyone who comes to Grá.
Susan and the team choose everything they do and everything they work with with the utmost care, from the stripy yellow and white colours of the café’s awning, to their splendid affogatos, made with bourbon vanilla ice cream and a double shot of 3fe espresso. In a speedy eighteen months, they have become elemental in County Kildare’s food culture, and have also become players in the local art and music scene thanks to regular exhibitions and regular musical gigs, along with their defining role in the coffee culture. Everything about Grá is meticulously curated, which makes the entire space feel like a gallery – spacious, uncluttered, clean, relaxing, delighting. It’s no easy thing to have such a fastidious eye when creating and working a space, and indeed the Irish are notoriously poor at understanding how to create the right feeling of feng shui in a building. But Grá gives the lie to that generalisation, for it is quietly, yet triumphantly gorgeous, welcoming and pleasing, from the crema on your flat white to the toasted almonds on your morning croissant. Such care – such grá! – truly gladdens the heart.