A modernised 1990s multiplex cinema with a few bottled beers, premix drinks and wines available to buy at the counter. You could probably just buy one and drink it in the lobby, but there were actually a number of films out this weekend I wanted to see.
So this won't be the last cinema posting in the next while.
This time of year, it isn't that uncommon to have a post that just says there *was* a register update, but it had nothing useful in it.
This is one of those posts.
I really didn't like this pub when I used to occasionally frequent it, when I worked in Swords and was getting trains back from Drumcondra frequently. The first time that is - long term readers will be able to tell that I've worked near Swords again in the over a decade I've been doing this.
The renovation for reopening here has been going along for *three years* at this stage, and when I visited, the main front bar had only just opened. The wine bar section - in what was the pubs smoking area - opened first, with the bar just getting open in time for the All Ireland final - the mens football one; they missed the hurling. And missed two previous years worth of finals, semi finals and gigs.
The pub is still a building site. The vast majority of the huge building is not yet open, meaning that the small area that is is actually entirely new to me - I only ever drank in the big lounge out the back in my 2006 era (I may have actually been here in 2007, but I left that job very abruptly early in 2007, so I probably didn't)
The front bar is clean and operational, but still smells of damp. The drinks selection is OK; and with brand new lines, well presented.
It's already better than it was last time - it's not owned by Sean Quinn, it almost certainly doesn't have sewage in the keg room - but I'll still continue to drink in McGraths.
Another Dalata hotel, another near identical experience at the bar - very few drink options, delivered very expensively.
However, the bar has a huge advantage most other hotel bars don't have - it has a massive, south-facing beer garden
This is almost certainly deliberately done due to the pubs close proximity to Croke Park, and not because they want this to be a Barge-like sunny pints destination.
I'll never be back, I suspect.
This wouldn't get a rewrite under the normal rules I apply. It isn't somewhere I intend to revisit a lot; and it isn't >=18 years since I was last there.
It's actually ~17 years. So I'd probably end up doing one in 2027 anyway.
The main reason I'm doing it is that the place has probably changed more in the interim than any other still trading premises in the city.
When I used to go here - fairly frequently for a short few years - this was Sin; a mid sized mid range nightclub that varied between gay nights, some serious dance music nights and, particularly as the financial crash got worse, €50 entry all-you-can-drink nights.
It survived the financial crash, and the hotelgeddon that killed many other nightclubs (possibly by being a smaller building than most), only to close in 2017 when the lease changed hands.
But the building - an 1850s Bewleys Tea warehouse conversion - stayed in licenced trade use; reopening in 2018 as a "theatre bar" (it is, in fact, a theatre in licencing terms and should not be serving drinks without food or a performance on...) by Gary Whelan, the Wild Duck.
This no longer looked or felt like a nightclub, with effectively a standard pub installed in the premises; and only the ceiling height in the back bar making it clear what it once was.
This iteration of the pub closed in October 2023, but the pub reopened in December 2024 under the auspices of the former operators of Lanigans, and the Lanigans style of having lots of random stuff hanging off the ceiling has been repeated - indeed, I believe it is the same stuff they were able to remove from the hotel before the bar changed operators.
The main issue here now is the price. Temple Bar prices are charged for pints, as the pub is in Temple Bar. There are cheaper options nearby, however, and that's where I go normally to begin with.
I "have" to go back to places like this, by rules of my own making.
You do not.
Do not go here unless you want your wallet emptied and ears assailed.
Eamonn Dorans, and the Rock Garden before it, were interesting music venues, in Temple Bar when it was actually still clinging on to being something cultural rather than tourist. I lasted attended here in 2004 or 2005, at a "battle of the bands" contest featuring an acquaintance from school.
Opening in 1989, the premises was actually meant to be a brewpub called The Brewers - which I believe would have been Ireland's first by some years; but a late enough change in focus to a rock bar happened instead.
Between the Rock Garden and Dorans, this lasted until 2009 and the financial crash; but everything since has been a continual downgrade
The first replacement was "3 Crown Alley", one of a number of premises that have just used their street address as their name in the city. This cleaned the place up and changed the music to indie and dance, and seems to have reviewed OK; but the downstairs venue very rapidly became an 80s themed nightclub called Madonnas
By 2014, the premises is the Old Storehouse, an expensive tourist trap that no Dubliner needs to darken the door of.
