Harvey Nichols Cafe

Good mid week meal deal of 3 courses with a cocktail for € 20. Not bad at all.

Dundrum Town Centre is a place that I often frequent and while I am usually disappointed by what’s on offer food wise (see other review on the disastrous Frangos) this sleek café has proved to be a shining beacon.
Located at the rear of the centre, it is on the precipice of the Pembroke District, a wonderful setting on a warm summers evening. The café sits just beside the main entrance to the upmarket store and is nestled neatly beneath the HN restaurant, all encased in glass.
The cafè is surprisingly spacious, yet compact and stylish. The kitchen is visible, something I always favour and the dining area is not cramped but relatively comfortable. They’ve recently disposed of the meretricious multicoloured chairs and replaced them with sturdier and more comfortable seats, albeit they are a little clinical and insipid. Fortunately the same cannot be said about the food on offer.
The menu is fairly extensive ranging from soups and sandwiches to the more fulfilling burger or fish and chips, all with the midis HN touch. Personally, I’d recommend the club sandwich, though at € 12.95 one may struggle to find justification in paying such an extortionate amount. Portion over extortion for me, as well as being mammoth in scale, it’s fraught with excellent quality ingredients.
One of the most important things for me when dining in such a facility as this, is the quality of the coffee and once again it doesn’t disappoint. The reason being that they use their own Harvey Nichols beans, subsequently sold in the shop above the cafè adjoining the restaurant, which are superb, even if a little weak for my taste.
The staff are wonderfully genial as is the atmosphere. The only thing that sullies this cafè is the price of the food. But remember, this is Harvey Nichols, what did you expect? So I shan’t throw stones in this glass house, it’s too damn good.

I was at the cocktail bar and whilst the menu looked great with everything from cosmopolitans to a cocktail called the hunt for red October the service was very poor. We ordered 3 different types of cocktails (waitress read our order out to us to confirm our drinks) and got 3 champagne cocktails instead (17 euros each and the most expensive on the menu). They didn’t offer to correct the order. Very poor Harvey Nicks and I won’t be back!

i had a lovely fruity cocktail upstairs in the posh bar and it wasn’t over-​priced at all! i will be back again, lovely comfy sofas, not too packed and great service.

This is the café on the square and not the restaurant upstairs. Saturday morning breakfast in Dundrum and didn’t want the usual over priced expensive coffee and Danish at Starbucks. We arrived just as they opened and purloined the complimentary Irish Times having forgotten to buy ours. We ordered a granola cup with Americano and hot milk for my other half while I had a Benedict bagel with a latte. Having had coffee here before I didn’t order my usual extra shot. We weren’t disappointed. The coffee was hot, strong and very welcome. I believe the granola was good — not my cup of tea — and my eggs Benedict on bagel was simply excellent with delicious rashers of bacon on top. There was enough for two in the portion so we’ll know better next time. At € 22 including tip it wasn’t cheap but a great way to start the weekend. And, yes, we did return the paper as we left. We’ll be back.

Went to the restaurant atop Harvey Nichols for lunch. They have a great summer special on where you get 2 courses and a glass of wine for 22 euro. The food is 4 star worthy — I had a great braised lamb shoulder for my main and a really amazing carrot cake for dessert — yeah high end carrot cake, who knew! The desserts in particular were really well presented on these glossy slate boards.
I did knock it down 1 star for painfully slow service. For such a high-​end place the service was simply not up to par. Sorry but an hour and a half for lunch in a shopping centre is simply too long. To the waiter’s credit, he did give us each a free glass of wine and coffee to make up for the delays.
Tip — worth a browse through the expensive (alright very expensive) food hall just next to the entrance — some great finds there…

Dundrum Town Centre in south County Dublin is known for its yummy mummy brigade, and the Harvey Nichols Café there is certainly child friendly I must say. I had lunch in it a while back with my mate who had a newborn and we were shown to a table by a staff member who was most helpful with the moving of the chairs thing that is necessary when one is negotiating a buggy through a busy eatery. We found the menu to be a pretty simple one and I had the Caesar salad with chicken while the mummy with me had lamb koftas in pitta bread, which she said were very tasty if messy to eat. My Caesar, on the other hand, was only alright — the chicken was very watery or something. But with both our dishes being just under € 10, we could have done a lot worse. The service is good and the atmosphere in the café is lively, but for some reason or other it’s also really noisy. It’s child friendly yes, but I’m not sure I’d bring a sleeping child there!