When we were kids, one of our greatest treats was to be taken by our dear mother to Bewley's Café on Grafton Street and filled with an assortment of sticky (yes, they were!) buns and cream-laden cakes. But that was when it really was Dublin's "legendary, lofty, clattery café", writes Frank McDonald
The place had a genuine "old world" atmosphere, lit by Harry Clarke's great stained-glass windows. Its bentwood chairs, upholstered booths and marble-topped tables looked as if they had been there forever, as did many of the clientèle. Some of the latter even had their own seats.
Writers such as Flann O'Brien and Paddy Kavanagh frequented the café, before doing their rounds of the pubs; they certainly wouldn't have been served wine there, never mind pints. It was all tea or coffee, to wash down the buns, the beans and chips or the great, greasy Irish breakfasts.
You just knew by the look, feel and smell of Bewley's that it was part of the city's heritage. The aroma of roasted coffee beans wafted out into the street from a machine in the window that was always on the go.
We learned that the cafés were owned by kindly, soft-spoken Victor Bewley, Dublin's most prominent Quaker, who at that time was involved in a civilised campaign to provide housing for Travellers.
He also created the Bewley's Community, which gave the staff a stake in the business.
There was no such thing as queuing to pay at a cash register in advance.
It was all waitress service then. Dressed in black with small white aprons and those little white hats that are no longer in fashion, the waitresses were the ones in charge. Tattens (Kathleen Twomey) was notorious for giving lip to her customers, and is still there on a part-time basis. She joined the company in 1949.
When Bewley's looked as if it might cease trading in the mid-1980s, it was no wonder that Garret FitzGerald, then taoiseach, was prompted by his late wife Joan to suggest that the cafés might be saved by the State. As she saw it, they were part of the essential Dublin and couldn't be allowed to sink.
Instead, ownership of the cafés was taken over by Campbell Catering in November 1986 - with a solemn pledge to keep them open. Their future seemed secure. The Bewley's brand went from strength to strength and a major expansion programme saw more outlets opening.
Change was inevitable. Self-service, which had been introduced on the second floor of the Grafton Street café in 1969, was extended throughout the premises and to Westmoreland Street, too. The waitresses, many of them getting on in years, were redeployed or chose retirement.
Grafton Street was streamlined. Out went the old counters while the offices on the mezzanine level were replaced by a café. Even the twin front doors were junked to create a wider entrance.
The mezzanine café was an imaginative re-use of space, but the other alterations were quite drastic. An extensive refurbishment, completed in 1999, re-ordered the interiors in a style that was meant to be sympathetic but seemed alien; the clattery café was replaced by a changeling.
The cement-rendered façade, relieved by good mosaic work, dates from 1927 when Bewley's bought the building; it remains the same, at least above ground-floor level. The café is unique in having its own theatre, best used nowadays for lunchtime shows during the Dublin Fringe Festival.
It beggars belief that the future of the Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street cafés might be under threat. But both are said to be unprofitable and, with Bewley's now a diversified business with international interests, this is clearly unsustainable.
They are facing competition from more contemporary outlets of the "café culture" that developed in Dublin during the boom years, all those places serving weak lattes in glass mugs. And now Starbucks, the world's largest café chain, is said to be planning to open 30 outlets throughout Ireland.
The former Bewley's in Dublin's South Great George's Street, which closed several years ago, is trading very successfully for Jay Bourke as CafeBarDeli because it's offering good food at affordable prices. The Campbell Bewley Group concedes the "food offer" in its cafés needs to be upgraded.
But it has become "very hard to sell coffee in a fashion retail environment" like Grafton Street, according to a spokesman for the company.
Bringing back the coffee bean roasters and baking bread, buns and cakes in the cafés are among the latest changes being considered, in an effort to restore profitability. More alterations may be made to the listed interiors to "open them up", but these would require planning permission.
If Bewley's is to remain an institution - "the heart and the hearth of Dublin", as Brendan Kennelly called it - its owners might take a look at the legendary Café Hawelka in Vienna and what makes it tick. Maybe it has got something to do with the fact that it hasn't changed since the 1920s.