Revisit ~20 Years On: 1014760 The Grattan

I forgot to write this up after having revisted it a few weeks ago; and I definitely think it deserves a revisit writeup for having changed so much in the interim.

An exceptionally long time ago, I went in to the pub in this building - at least three incarnations of pub name let alone operator ago - because the signage outside said they did food; and I wanted food before going to seen Finn Harps play St Pats down the road.

After buying my pint, I found out they did not sell food and had not done so for a very long time. The barman was quite snarky about the painted signs saying they did... 

The pub was dead quiet and astoundingly run down, neither a sign of somewhere that has a bright future ahead of it. I never returned; and soon enough that era of the pub closed down. 

It clearly reopened, and has gone through multiple incarnations since. I think the current one may be Brazilian led - that it has a sushi offering in the building now only further supports this as there is some inexplicable Brazilian sushi connection that we can see elsewhere in Dublin

The new operation bears no resemblance to my last visit. It's clean, its busy and it does actually serve food. I'd still prefer other pubs in Inchicore; but it is at least somewhere you might actually want to drink now.

Revisited pubs March 2026

A month with quite a lot of revisits, and absolutely no new visits  - because there's nothing easy to visit left.

N0006 Brew Dock, many times
N1111 Black Lion
1014760 The Grattan, last visited as the Village Inn
N1123 Slatts 
1017068 Rascals - These last four on a trip to Inchicore for my now annual commemeration of the last proper night out before COVID
S1468 Thomas House
S1447 Drop Dead Twice, freshly reopened after a devasting fire some years ago
S1456 Lark Inn
S1465 Dudleys - written up as Bakers but visited many more times as Dudleys
1008963 Tapped
S0077 Nearys
S0015 Ginger Man
Daphni  - Still unable to get a seat!
1008645 Molloys
N1061 Mooneys
N1074 Madigans North Earl Street
N0191 Pantibar
N1070 Nealons
S3383 Alexander Hotel

Revisit 19 Years On: N1074 Madigans North Earl Street

I last visited this pub the same day as I last visited the previous place - just before going to see Tiësto play in The Point in 2007.

We ended up here as the Abbey Street Madigans didn't serve food - then or possibly ever, I think; but the North Earl Street one did; and the bar staff suggested we go their then sister pub for our dinner.

It still does serve food. It also still looks quite a lot like the Abbey Street no-longer-a-Madigans, with a lot of coloured glass in the internal decoration; and also promo posters in the toilets for Fransican Well beers that neither pub can possibly still sell due to their recent shutdown. 

It's a very central pub, close to where I work and where I have worked most of the time since 2013; but it never comes up in my mind as somewhere to visit. And it likely still won't. 

Revisit 19 Years On: N1061 Mooneys

It's ten seconds before sunrise... or more accurately, its about 6pm on a mid summer Saturday evening; and you've just met up with an acquaintance (a good friends Best Man, eventually) on your way to see the then biggest DJ in the world play his last ever good show in Ireland; only about 7 months since his previous show in the same venue.

You end up being appearing on the tour DVD for about three frames of video (I can't find this to link to anywhere, but trust me, it happened).

But beforehand, you go to two city centre pubs - one for pints, and another for dinner, before getting a taxi out to the Point Depot. This is the first of them. 

This isn't a particularly memorable pub - if anything, that it vaguely looks and feels like you're drinking in someone's conservatory is about all there is to remember; and my RetroReview writeup was exceptionally terse due to this.

It's now more notable, to me anyway, for pretending to be a former JG Mooneys premises - the actual Abbey Mooney was two doors down, but a little inaccuracy never hurt a Dublin pub in marketing terms.

The Sally O'Brien Lookalike Contest - Harp promo from 1983

I recently took possession of a collection of beermats, dating from at least the mid 1960s (based on there being Time mats) to the mid 00s - mats I remember being current in my drinking era as well as specific 2003 Rugby World Cup ones.

These will provide some much needed content on here and on Instagram for the next while, considering the lack of pubs left for me to visit; and the exceptionally limited number of new openings there have been so far in 2026 (and with little expected to come soon).

One thing that struck me was the number of cases of the mat being a competition advertisement (and often, but not in this case, an actual entry form), mostly in the first half of the 1980s. And while a lot of these were for prize draws - tickets to events, holidays, and electronics being the common prizes - one particularly stood out.

Harp Lager, which has started to reappear in Dublin's pubs in recent years (particularly after Diageo lost the Budweiser brewing contract to C&C), was a dominant player in the lager market in Ireland for decades, but by the 1980s was beginning to lose market share to other lagers, particularly those being brewed by Beamish in Cork (who produced Carling, Miller and at one point, Carlsberg under licence). I am assuming this is what lead to a significant marketing campaign, which most people remember for one line in the TV advert:

"and Sally O'Brien, and the way she might look at you"

Guinness Ltd then decided to see if they could find a case where Sally looked like you, launching a Sally O'Brien lookalike contest, with a regional heat format.

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The contest was launched by Vicki Michelle - the original Sally you needed to look like - in March 1983, with five regional winners to be decided. There was a very strange system where the person who sent in the winning entry won as much as the actual winner for each region, a then substantial £500 (around €1900 currency converted and inflated). Vicki was one of the judges, along with Harp's marketing director, and the award winning creator of the Harp ad, along with other noted Guinness advertising. The overall prize was a trip for two to Hollywood, plus £1000 (€3800).

The contest was heavily advertised in the press, and the regional winners were all pushed in adverts in their regional papers once selected. These winners were:

Dublin: Catherine Keane 

Limerick: Aileen O'Sullivan

Cork: Eileen Galvin

Galway: Geraldine Holmes

Waterford: Deirdre O'Brien

Catherine Keane won the overall award, a quite convincing lookalike based on the photos. Catherine was a teacher in Navan at the time and I presume remained at that profession, rather than becoming a waitress in a French bistro as Vicki Michelle had since become vastly more famous for than for appearing in a beer ad.

 

Evening Herald, May 12th, 1983

Occasional unofficial lookalike contests get organised for various celebrities to this day; but I seriously doubt we'd ever see a brewery doing such a thing again. Indeed, modern regulations (statutory and voluntary alike) on alcohol advertising mean the chances of their being a known named character in an ad to begin with. I also don't think the submitter prize would really wash these days - the women were the stars here, and giving an equal amount to someone else for posting in a photo is at best pointless.

March 2026 Revenue register update

This has been out for weeks at this stage, but there wasn't a huge amount to report, but I may as well post it for consistency reasons.

There were a relatively large amount of administrative/procedural changes and nothing particularly interesting:

Reappeared

N0229 Dolly Heffernans, Mulhuddart - long-term closed and drops off the register only to reappear.

S0228 The Ton Tin, Rathfarnham - also closed. Licence still held by former operator it seems.

S4356 Metro Cafe Bar, Tallaght - licence claimed to be held by a struck off company - may be preparation for sale of premises or licence

Renumbered

1013563 -> 1022852 National Gallery café, Kildare Street

S3099 -> 1022653 Hoxton Hotel, Exchequer Street (this confirms 1022738 The Globe remains on its own licence)

1015221 -> 1022635 Aloft Dublin City Hotel, Blackpitts

(Almost) Every Pub In Maynooth

There's an (Almost) on this - because I'm not particularly in the mood to wait until I've justified spending the money required to go to the Michelin starred restaurant in KDP0052 Carton House to tick off its licence. But otherwise, I completed the set of Maynooths pubs over 20 years ago, and then picked up the only addition since. 

KDP0215 O'Neills

My local, so I need to be nice about it!

A mid 2000s new build, replacing in part the owners former butchers store - the shopfront of same has been preserved and is used as the access to the keg/plant room from the smoking area. Heavily food based trade, but consistently busy enough. Not particularly student friendly or popular, which is a good thing when you're getting old and decrepit and don't want the noise, or the constant reminders that you're ancient.

KDP0088 The Roost

A Louis Fitzgerald pub I no longer darken the door of. I've made my opinions on Fitzgerald pubs clear on other writeups.

KDP0145 McMahons

The sister pub to the McMahons in Celbridge I mentioned, I sometimes call this my "backup local" - my local does not open on Mondays and can sometimes be either exceptionally busy, or exceptionally noisy - there are occasions where there are different live musicians inside and out. McMahons does not (often) do this.

Massively refurbed in my teens from a fairly run down pub in to something high end, it has held up well and is still a good condition and well run premises.

KDP0151 Bradys

Literally next door to McMahons, everyone who watched Virgin Media News during the pandemic will know Bradys, as the owner was one of the four or five pub owners continually interviewed as representatives of the industry - helped heavily by one of the Virgin reporters living in the town!

1010273 Donatellos / Oak Alley Cocktail Bar

Maynooth has a Pubstaurant. Or more specifically, a restaurant with an occasionally separately open cocktail bar, with a full pub licence. Ironically, the restaurant down the road with a bar that is much more commonly open is not legally a pub...

KDP0073 Glenroyal Hotel (and formerly Happy Out / The Fizz / The Fitzgerald / Club G nightclubs)

A sprawling hotel complex, which started as quite a small hotel but has had more extensions than I can count, this is where everyones 21st was. Also the hotel bar was briefly very popular in the mid 00s, and the nightclub was inexplicably popular up until three pubs grew music bars (The Roost, Bradys,  briefly O'Neills), and then it fell off a cliff. 

The nightclub is now a cafe, and the bar very sedate in the evenings. But it is still public.

Newtown Inn

Maynooth also has an estate pub, which doesn't seem to have renewed its licence yet this year; and I don't retain all the old files for the rest of the country. But it is open.

Last time I was in here was a good few years ago, and the pub was exactly the same as it had been when I was drinking there underage in 2003/4. A very high end fitout for the early 00s - honeyed wood, white leather, chromed metal - all basically pristine, because the pub was never particularly busy.

I believe it has been extensively modernised since, but as it's in an estate on the other side of the town, I basically forget it exists. I do sometimes drop in to its surprisingly good off-licence though.

Closed:

The Red Door / The Duke & Coachmen / Cathedral / Mantra / The Leinster Arms

Possibly the oldest pub in the town, this late 18th Century coaching inn continued to operate as a small hotel in to the mid 1990s; but during my youth the Leinster Arms was mainly known as quite a rough pub with quite a rough nightclub. Didn't stop me going there, occasionally.

Mantra was a Celtic Tiger horror show, and Cathedral and the Duke & Coachmen both attempts to round off the edges after the inevitable financial failures. The Red Door was a temporary COVID era opening to allow The Roost to overspill. 

The bulk of the premises has been converted to student accommodation now, but the bar is still physically there, and retains planning permission to open as a "licenced restaurant". 

Dowdstown Hotel

This had a few minorly different names over its surprisingly short life. Built by the family of some classmates in school, I never actually went here; and now it's a nursing home.

Moyglare Manor Hotel

I *think* this had a public licence. Closed in the 00s, bought to become a branch of The Priory rehab clinics (or so the local mythos went), and now a high end self-catering venue. It's also Maynooth, Co. Meath rather than Maynooth, Co. Kildare; but it's closer to Maynooth than anywhere else.