Last Post and Chorus: Frank McNally on memories of a long-lost Dublin restaurant
Mention of a long-lost, late-night Dublin restaurant, The Last Post, in our Letters page recently has evoked the light of other days for one reader, Eoin O’Kelly. No, I don’t mean mere nostalgia. In this case, the evocation involves an actual light, or more specifically a lampshade branded “The Last Post”. Eoin remembers it from a flat he used to share in Cork in the 1990s, with a certain Jas Kaminski.Now I too know Kaminski, because later in the 1990s he became one of my Irish Times colleagues. Then at some point, we lost touch. But as I now realise, he lives these days in Ljubliana. From where, thanks to Eoin and the Proustian lampshade, he has emailed with family lore about The Last Post, once owned by his father, the late Jan Kaminski, a former Polish wartime refugee.READ MOREThe mood in Brussels is poised between worried and smugCity slickers: John S Doyle on the launch of In Dublin 50 years agoA language divided: Charting the rise of American English in everyday Irish speakThe Irish origins of an increasingly popular theology in the USKaminski snr bought the restaurant some time after he graduated from Trinity College (TCD) in the 1950s when, perhaps reflecting its location in a tough part of Dublin’s north quays, it was offered “for sale at any price”.Jas writes: “His early business model was based on truck drivers who had arrived early for the ferry at Dublin Port and passed the time by pulling in at a layby [across the Liffey] in front of St James’s Gate.”The £500 all-in price for restaurant and three-storey building may not have included a full drinks licence, Jas implies.“My mother and grandparents also worked there, preparing meals while my father was out front. Red wine was served in Coca Cola bottles and white wine served in teapots, my mother told me later.”In any case, the venue was an instant success: “The Last Post drew a mixed crowd together and became a popular spot in Dublin’s nightlife. Friends from TCD ventured up the Liffey and were joined by barristers and lawyers from the nearby Four Courts. Early-morning workers, criminals, and even politicians went there from time to time.”The actor’s trousers were torn, which he claimed had been the result of an altercation with the proprietor’s Alsatian earlier in the nightSome local customers could be a challenge, but Kaminski snr had escaped the Nazis as a child in Poland, so he was well up to whatever inner-city Dublin could throw at him. “My father had an informal agreement with a renowned hatchet-wielding Dublin criminal to leave his ‘tools’ under the jukebox at the entrance,” Jas recalls of one regular. Other customers sometimes had to be ejected physically. Once, this happened at the cost of a shirtsleeve: “‘Your cufflink, Jan!’ my mother shrieked at him one evening, when he came back inside with a sleeve missing.”Sure enough, newspaper archives suggest that, especially after the going down of the sun, The Last Post could be a war zone.In November 1962, for example, a man named Redmond earned two months in jail for an assault on Kaminski during which, according to the Irish Press, the accused “rushed into the kitchen with a hatchet”. Perhaps it was the one from under the jukebox.In a 1966 case, one of several men involved in a brawl on the premises was reported to have used a “knife” and “fork” as weapons. [ How a 16th-century English failed monk tried to bridge Anglo-Irish linguistic gulfOpens in new window ]Not that it was just local gougers who caused problems. Another Last Post customer to appear before the courts, in July 1969, was the world-famous actor Peter O’Toole.A prosecuting Garda testified that between 4am and 5am one night, he had seen O’Toole trying to kick in the restaurant’s front door. The actor’s trousers were torn, which he claimed had been the result of an altercation with the proprietor’s Alsatian earlier in the night.O’Toole was at the height of his career then and would be nominated for an Oscar in Goodbye Mr Chips, released later that year. But it probably wasn’t chips he was looking for on this occasion. Noting his normally good character, the judge decided against a prison sentence but fined him £30.The Last Post’s proprietor at the time was named as a Mr Markowski, so Kaminski may have moved on from catering by then. As noted in this newspaper when he died in 2019, Kaminski’s other businesses had included the Baggot Mews – also a late-night restaurant – and a hotel in Clare. Then he set up Concorde Travel and, before it was a thing, became a specialist in tourism to eastern Europe, eventually including pilgrimages to Medjugorje.As for the lamp, his son in Ljubliana recalls how he found this piece of old Dubliana while a student in the 1980s, looking for a flat on the quays. He identified the building, by then derelict, where his father’s restaurant had once been, and seeing the lampshade among the ruins, took it as a souvenir. “A short while later,” he concludes poignantly, “I noticed a picture and story at the bottom of a page in The Irish Times about a building on the quays which had collapsed, but luckily no one was hurt. On closer reading, I recognised The Last Post!”
