Friday 30 March 2018

S3217 River House Hotel

AKA The Hub and Mezz, this is a hotel with a huge bar/club complex on the ground and basement floors. Tripadvisor etc suggest that you would have to be interested in hearing music til the early hours to want to stay in the hotel!

The Mezz claims to be a dive bar. It isn't.

The Hub, or "Mezz Venue" as the hotel website now calls it, is one of the few larger dance venues left in the city - an ever decreasing thing, with some of those left (S2957 Tivoli and 1009202 Hangar - both visited many times pre-blog)  under imminent threat of redevelopment. There is apparently a second room here - it wasn't open so I didn't see it, but this would make it even larger than I thought.

N0906 The Gate Hotel (Fibber McGees)

Fibbers - probably the last of the pubs people were surprised I'd never been to. And now I have. And only a third of the way through!

Dublin's longest standing rock/metal bar at this stage, this is one of the three premises which open on to a shared smoking area and beer garden in a very unusual arrangement I haven't seen anywhere else. N2123 The Living Room and N1556 Murrays (first visited in time immemorial as Frazers, so not on the blog) are the other two of the three.

The downstairs club wasn't open yet when I visited, which is where most of the more interesting stuff happens, but upstairs was nicely busy and with a decent crowd. Smoking area was less sports-oriented than it would be earlier in the evening.

N0088 Bleecker Street

Passed this place many a time in a previous job that took me to the Mater Private many times and assumed it was just a cafe so was a bit surprised to see it listed with a standard pub licence when collating the list. Walk inside and it still mostly resembles a cafe, except for the full bar along one side.

A long-standing premises with a history of former names - the owner gave me some more than I had on the map, that I forgot to take down - it was most recently Jim Beams. That name still graces the tap heads in a rare case of an internal ghost sign.

Food is decent, range of drinks is decent, staff are great - Johnnie, Ciara and Elena if I remember the names correctly. Well worth a visit, even if its a Rovers pub near Bohs territory!

N0068 Glynns

A very traditional North Inner City locals pub on Dorset Street. There isn't much more to write about it.

Thursday 15 March 2018

March 2018 licence update

Pretty sizeable update this time

New
1013644 Stella Cinema, Rathmines
1013760 Savoy Cinema, O'Connell Street - this was licenced in the distant past but had stopped for a prolonged time
1013769 9 Below, Stephens Green

Renumbered
1013043 O'Donoghues was S0113 when last on the licence register. Has been open throughout.
1013580 Trinity City Hotel was S3651
1013727 Kavanaghs, Dorset Street was 1010077

Relisted (but still closed)
1000996 Paidi Ogs, Mulhuddart
1010777 Kylemore House, Kylemore Road
1013317 The Black Horse, Kimmage

Sunday 11 March 2018

N2114 TGI Fridays (Blanchardstown)

I would just say see previous reviews, but the food and staff in this branch were both better than the previous three I've been to (one, Blackrock, predated the blog and is long since closed).

These all have full, ordinary 7-day pub licences - there's no question about whether they count as pubs. There's still two more to do.

Friday 2 March 2018

S3718 Peader Kearney's

A normal, completely and utterly fake, traditional city centre pub.

The interior here would make you think that you're in a premises of centuries standing, but this is in fact the pub which had the first out-of-county licence transfer at par, as recently as 2000.

The downstairs here has recently enough become a music venue, Underground, named after the former life of S3794 Lapello down the road.

S3660 Chester Beatty Library

It's really arguable as to whether this is a pub or not - I have decided to count the National Cultural Institution licence holders as public licences but it is very much for the individual to decide if they are if attempting a similar run

The cafe in the Chester Beatty Library has a small, and painfully expensive, range of bottled beers and wine available. You don't need to buy food, which is the deciding factor for me in considering it a "pub" but I doubt they would be too happy if you just bought drink all day. Neither would your wallet!

N0303 The Cock Tavern

I happened to be in Swords of a Saturday lunchtime, and initially started my way up the steps of N2538 The Old Borough to get lunch - and then realised I'd been there before. I've mostly run out of premises that I suddenly realise I've been to, but the long closure and rebrand of this one meant it had slipped my mind - and it was the 2006 BT Christmas Party the last time I was there!

One quick diversion down the road later and I was tucking in to a toasted special and pint in this traditional pub.

The pubs website makes vague claims towards having a medieval, which is at least a bit unlikely but the pub is definitely in the hundreds of years old. A slightly odd lounge/bar split with the lounge having the full frontage and the bar along the side creates a very narrow and long interior.

I'm going to ignore the impact of the Old Borough being added to the stats on the milestone pubs, I thought they were those numbers when I was there...