Dublin: The Winding Stair Restaurant is worth the climb
WHETHER paying customers know it or not, some restaurants have a lot of memories attached to them. Your reviewer, for example, recalls spending more time in the Winding Stair second-hand bookshop/coffee bar throughout the ’80s and ’90s than was good for the bank balance. Your reviewer, also, is very much aware that part of the reason why he wasted so much time and spent so much money on dusty hardbacks back then was that the office of In Dublin magazine was in the basement, and if you accidentally-on-purpose bump into the editor for a fancy-meeting-you-here chat, then so be it.
Even back then, the Winding Stair was the kind of place to take comfort in. You could nurse a bog-standard coffee (no one had heard about skinny cappuccinos back then), tuck into a truck-size sandwich and sit by a window that looked over the Ha’penny Bridge. Your mission in the pre-internet age? How about reading and watching the world go by without being troubled by texts and tweets for an hour or so?
