Sir, – Frank McNally’s piece on the Civil Service Dining Club (An Irishman’s Diary, May 13th) brought back memories. He was unsure if the clientele were all civil servants. I can assure him that they definitely were not.
With others, I first patronised the CSDC in the mid-1960s when I was a student in UCD, Earlsfort Terrace. Even then it seemed a relic of a bygone age.
Our student garb contrasted with the jackets and ties of the civil servants. At lunchtime, one sometimes had to queue for a table. We students particularly stuck out then, yet nobody suggested that we should leave.
Lunchtime visits were rare; we would get a high tea back in our student digs later on in the evening. The CSDC also offered evening meals, something I availed of in the years after graduation and becoming a teacher and before marriage.
Tony O’Reilly, Nell McCafferty, Ian Bailey and more: 50 people who died in 2024
Women are far more likely to re-gift unwanted presents than men
Restaurant of the year, best value and Michelin predictions: Our reviewer’s top picks of 2024
‘I personally only come here for the ladies’: Fog hits racing but not youthful glamour at Leopardstown
It was much quieter in the evening and the standard offering of bacon, egg and chips, tea, bread and butter was a welcome preface to a night out. Like Frank McNally, my last meal there was in 1985, when I was briefly seconded to the then Curriculum and Examinations Board in nearby Adelaide Road.
A few years afterwards, being in the area, I decided to have an evening tea there. I was peremptorily stopped at the gate and was told that the CSDC had closed “for security reasons”. – Yours, etc,
TERRY DOLAN,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.