Anton and I sip blue drinks and watch the dancefloor from a high table beside the bar. I am unable to explain to him why “Lafayette” is pronounced the way it is. “That’s just the way it is,” I say.
“Why don’t you want to know, if you don’t understand?”
“I never said that.”
On the day of my 23rd birthday, I have made my way up Westmoreland Street with some friends, Anton included, to Lafayette, a café bar/club presumably named for the French constitutional monarchist and héros des deux mondes, who fought in both the American and French revolutions. If two worlds are similarly or comparably joined by this venue, formerly the site of the not-so-fondly remembered Redz, then it is not immediately apparent. As far as constitutional monarchy goes, it would be a stretch to suggest an architectural doffing of the cap to such a political system on Lafayette’s part, though a raised DJ platform takes pride of place in the high-ceilinged main area, in which the walls are a collage of polished wood and recessed lighting and one can barely move for the crowd, in thrall to the booming, identikit set.
“These blue drinks are class,” Anton says to me three times before I hear him correctly.
So how far has Lafayette come from the days of Redz? To judge by their online presence, we’re talking about a place where “über cool meets Paris café chic”, while the reality of my current experience suggests something far less “continental” and far more in-keeping with the great Dublin tradition of “the soulless late pub”. Imagine relocating Café en Seine into an airport bar and you’re warm. Toss in a few multicoloured drinks promotions and you’re hot, hot, hot. Add to that a soundtrack curated by a Costa del Sol shopkeeper and you’ve got the right temperature if describing Lafayette, exactly.
In all honesty, however, the pitchers of blue drink purchased are remarkably tasty, if dangerous for any sufferers of acid reflux, and Lafayette’s drinks promotions (€10 pitchers of odd cocktails/standard beers) are quite attractive, and numerous, for a city centre late bar. The very fact that it’s packed to an uncomfortable level too, on this Friday night, suggests an appeal of some kind, even if it is largely lost on me. Café bar it is not, at least not after the sun sets, but one could hardly criticise the place for not being functional insofar as it achieves exactly what it aims to. Lafayette, then, insisting that history is, perhaps, not cyclical: nothing revolutionary.
“Why is ‘why’ not spelled H-W-Y?” Anton asks me, as we sweatily make our way out into the still-warm evening, our three friends having walked on ahead. Hearing no reply, he taps me on the shoulder. “Look at my tongue,” he implores me. “Aaaaaaahhhhhh – is it blue?”
“Yes,” I laugh, and mirror his opened mouth: “aaaaaaaahhhhh-”
Two blue tongues turned to the sky; two tongues out of five.
Lafayette
22-25 Westmoreland Street
Dublin 2
t: (01) 6746335
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
