(no number yet) Daphni

Animal Collective's latest, erm, not animal named bar was announced months, if not actually about a year, in advance - as the flagship tenant of the ground floor of the Bolands Mills development. And indeed, the bar is actually in the retained former mill structure.

Named, it seems, after one of the stage names of the musician also known as Caribou - Caribou being the name of their (lamented) original bar in Galway and its replacement in Dublin - this premises is quite like their others in Dublin, albeit everything in it is very new.

It is also exceptionally busy already - I was unable to get a seat *or* a perch and drank my pint standing. At 5:20. They have the staffing to cope with the crowds, and I presume there will be outdoor seating in summer - indeed there might have been some already, but it was way too cold to check.

It's close to my office so I'll almost certainly be back. The drinks lineup is good, and if I could actually have sat down I'd definitely have had a few more. 

The pub's logo is a drawing of a dog, so possibly Daphni is actually a specific dog rather than a reference to Dan Snaith.

December 2025 Revenue register update

Very little of interest this month.

Additions:

1022517 Point A Hotel, Oliver Bond Street - I went in here some months ago when it had opened, asking if the bar was open to the public. It wasn't; but that may have been due to it not having a licence yet; and it now has a conventional Publicans (Ordinary) Hotel (Public Bar). I must revisit.

(no number yet) MJ Wrights

The trend of the day (well, year - years already even) for new pubs in Dublin is Old. As in the pub has to look as if it's been there for around 100 years.

Some places do a fairly good job of this, but are let down by how new everything looks - 1021705 Porters falls in to this category. Some, like the one at the other end of the same building (South City Markets) - 1020516 O'Regans do better, but miss in some way or another - the seating layout and the toilets aren't 'right' for me in O'Regans for whatever reason.

MJ Wrights doesn't suffer from these, though. Whether that is down to the experience of running some olde-worlde-style pubs within the Wright chain, possibly some re-use of fittings from their other premises, or just re-use of fittings from the Rustic Stone restaurant and winebar which formerly sat on this site; I don't know - but the pub feels suitably lived in for something only a week old when I visited it.

My complaints about the place are the prices - but it is the city centre - and the stools being too high at the large table-thingy towards the back. Not inauthenticity or trying too hard, like they so could have been.

Revisited pubs, November 2025

A sad final entry for a regular on here, as November had my - and anyones - last visits to Underdog. Other than that, it was a very quiet month for pubs, old and new (one writeup to come) as I was away for most weekends

N0007 Clearys
N0099 Underdog
S3903 Pygmalion (Grogans was full!)
N0006 Brew Dock

Revenue register update, November 2025

Nothing. Nothing at all. Not one change worth me mentioning here.

What is interesting to note is that as this is the month which starts the 2025/6 licencing year, there are 204 less pub and pub-like premises on the published register than there were at the start of the last month. 

These are all going to be paperwork related in some way or another, and should trickle back on over the year - but proves my point about how a random pull of the register is useless for figuring out how many pubs there are in Dublin.

1022516 Moxy Dublin Docklands

East Wall hasn't got a lot of pubs - and never has. There's the Seabank House off to one side; and there used to be a good number of spirit grocers and beerhouses that may have let you drink on premises, but these are all gone.

I suspect this may be due to the history of East Wall's construction - heavily led by various religious "utility societies", a sort of equivalent to modern housing associations. These would have been less willing to provide sites for pubs than private developers; and as such, none ever really opened up.

But it now has a bar in a more central part of the community for the first time, and its quite a fancy one at that (albeit if you read the writeup of it, you'll the Seabank is also fitted out to an incredibly high standard - so that's clearly just the norm here!)

The other Moxy in Dublin has a very strange bar that is effectively also the reception desk, but this one is more like a conventional hotel lobby bar; albeit with an exceptionally limited tap selection. There are more bottled beers available, the prices weren't too huge, and the toilets were not locked - which is my bugbear in hotel lobby bars that are open to the public, but clearly don't actually want the public.

This might be a more useful addition to the area than first expected actually. 

Revisited pubs: October 2025

There's very very few new places for me to go, so I've been going to some old places. And some edge case places. There was also a fair bit of city-based socialising this month to lead to such a large selection.

1007394 Davy Byrnes

S0198 Cassidys

Crafty Fox - well, all previous visits on this licence were to 1006303 Opium... or S0120 Whelans... I'm not sure which licence this is attached to, but the tills have Opium's screensaver; and the pubs have the same owner anyway.

S0088 Foggy Dew

S0086 The Palace

S0022 The Workshop

N0006 Brew Dock

N0082 McGraths

N0020 Juno - first visit since it became Juno; having last been here when it was the Red Parrot

N0088 Bleeker Street

N1620 BoCo

N0099 Underdog

N1070 Nealons - first visit in about nine years

S0083 Beer Temple

S0106 Porterhouse