The Lough Café — Restaurant in Cork

Food and drinks: I got an iced latte and it was great (4 EUR). I'll definitely come back for the coffee and try a hot drink. I had a vegetarian toastie (8 EUR) and it was okay. I wouldn't order it again (I think if it had jalapenos it would be even better). The portion is very good and it comes with crisps on the side. I wasn't hungry afterwards. They had a great selection of sweets (some vegan), but I didn't try any. They also have ice cream, crisps, and bottled drinks.

Atmosphere: Absolutely lovey. It's a lively cafe and is very cosy. I went on a sunny day and it was lovely. They have seating indoors and outdoors as well. There are locally made earrings and postcards and other gifts for sale. Really cute. There was music on speakers but it wasn't loud or overbearing (some cafes have it blasting). This is definitely a popular spot.

Service: The staff is great and quick even though they're a very busy cafe. You can tell the local community appreciates them and the cafe . The only reason I took a star off is because the cafe does not offer WiFi, which is something I'd expect from any cafe. And there wasn't a good signal so it was hard to even work from a hotspot (even more reason to have WiFi).

Other: The place is dog friendly. Has toilets. Indoor and...

I have to say, generally I have had good experience, but this one bad trumps all the good ones. The baristas that work there are lovely, customer and dog friendly. The older lady, I assume she is the owner is polar opposite. I will avoid at all cost in the future.

Here's the story: 11:00am I ordered coffee, bottled water and a cake, I sat down to enjoy it and asked for a Wifi password to finish some work before my colleague joins me.

The older lady told me in a very passive aggressive tone that I should be mindful of other customers and that people come there for lunch, it gets quite busy and they don't have a place to sit. I said I was meeting someone (which shouldn't have had any impact anyways considering I am a paying customer) to which she responded, again in a passive aggressive tone "yeah.yeah."

She then proceeded to pass the table multiple times and give me the stink eye, even though the place was half empty...

I would have left if I wasn't meeting a colleague.

The coffee is good, the cakes are gorgeous, but the Alchemy down Barracks street has the same offering and much better...

It’s normally really nice but there was a different one working today and I needed to go to the bathroom before ordering and she smiled as she said it was for customer use only. She then went on to say it was being cleaned which was fair enough, the guy who was nice came out a min later and I was able to go in. It just stuck me as wierd how passive aggressive she was. It should be normal to expect people use the bathroom before ordering - not everyone likes the idea of bringing drinks into the bathroom - obvious no? It’s a perfect cafe otherwise and I would have given it a 5 star as everyone else is really nice. I was very surprised as they are always super nice. When you think of it as well if I was an elderly person or pregnant it would have been very bad because they could be in a rush and there isn’t a toilet nearby. There are certain things you put on signs but you certainly don’t voice that to people. It must be strange to get a kick out of getting people to wait to use the bathroom. She smiled all the way out too kinda walking behind me...