N1114 Bridge Inn

This is the one in Chapelizod, for avoidance of confusion with the few similarly named premises.

It isn't often that I get tweeted by someone involved in the operation of a pub; however in this case I was informed of the re-opening by one.

This pub has been closed on and off for some time, with a brief period as an Australian theme pub most recently (expect this Facebook link to expire eventually); and it was obvious that the refurbishment works were near complete after my recent visits to the neighbouring pubs. I tweeted about this and was then kept updated on the progress.

Now heavily rowing themed, the pub is somewhat linked to Carrig Brewing; although I'm not sure exactly how. A fine Edwardian pub, it's good to see it reopened and hopefully now with solid backing it should out-last the previous incarnations.

N0117 Maples House Hotel

This is a small hotel on a residential street, not the most common location for a hotel anymore. However, the Maples has been in business here for quite some time - the grandparents of my drinking partner for this evenings visits had their wedding reception here in the 1950s. The hotel is capable of hosting civil weddings and appears to be quite competitive price-wise, should anyone want to have their own there.

The bar is a fairly generic hotel bar that feels like it is probably also the breakfast room. There was no real atmosphere to speak of for a Friday evening, but there does appear to be a cohort of local regulars as well as any guests eating or drinking there. Some of the smaller hotels in Dublin only hold a residents bar licence, however a full licence is in place here - meaning you do not need to be a resident. Not that that requirement dissuades a few of the residents bar licence holders around!

N0079 Botanic House

This fine Victorian lump of a pub in very, very south of Glasnevin (Glasnevin seems to slowly creep over less fashionable placenames nearby, not that there is anything wrong with Phisboro - even prior to its recent Time Out push) closed towards the end of the financial crisis and only recently reopened.

Now refurbished to a fairly standard semi-traditional style, it doesn't seem to differ much in description from the pre-closure plug on Publin; however sports are no longer a major part of the package. Now marketed as a gastropub, the restaurant service in the lounge is the main attraction here now and is what I ended up sampling.

A heavily seafood based menu does seem a bit odd so far inland, at least to me. I don't eat seafood if I'm paying for it (I've had the occasional allegedly-cod and chips foisted on me) so I stuck to the remaining third of the menu and the food was fine; nothing earth shattering but a little bit above a normal pub anyway

A fairly generic tap lineup is joined by Larkins Irish craft product. I stuck my head in to the bar section to see if it was massively different to the rest of the pub - and it isn't hugely.

N0235 Doyle's Corner

Leonard's, Hanlon's and Doyle's - all junctions on the North and South Circular Roads which have adopted the name of the pub at them; and all now pubs that have added the Corner to their actual name.

The two on the North Circular have had patchy opening histories recently, but both Hanlon's and Doyle's are now operating as part of stable chains and should hopefully remain open.

Doyle's is now operated by the Oscars group, with two Oscars-branded premises and The Barbers in Grangegorman already operating succesfully. If you've been to those, or read my writeups on them, you'll know what to expect here in terms of service and offerings. That those offerings generally include Kinnegar Rustbucket on tap is enough to bring me in anyway.

The two Oscars branded premises are more geared to food, with The Barbers too small to even offer it and is more of a traditional pub. Doyle's size and location means they manage to mix the two quite successfully.

With the Botanic House now reopened (see next post), this area is back up to its full compliment of pubs now, continuing a trend across the city; although there are still closures for redevelopment rather than lack of trade happening.

N0250 The Villager

This has to be one of the smaller pubs I'll visit during the course of the blog. It has been described elsewhere - including on a press cutting they display on the wall - as a "country pub near the city centre" and this is a fairly accurate assessment of its form and layout.

It was a sunny weekend afternoon when I arrived, and most of the customers were sitting outside the pub on the steps from the footpath to the road. As I walked in to an effectively empty bar, under a still dripping plant waterer, I thought I may have gone in to the wrong part of the pub (or a private party) and had to ask the staff if I was in the right place. But I had - this was the entirety of the pub.

The downstairs of the pub is one small room with old fashioned seating; and upstairs is a cocktail bar. There's an on-site pizza oven somewhere, which I could smell but didn't see. The pub is cozy, the staff are friendly and the drink is reasonably priced. This is somewhere you could easily adopt as your local, if only property prices weren't quite so high in Chapelizod!

N0249 Mullingar House

"A Joycean Pub". A phrase that frequently dooms a pub to being a tourist trap, or causes mass confusion when demolition of a not even contemporaneous version of it begins - the 1930s Ormond Hotel building being the example here.The Mullingar House is a Joycean Pub, or at least the outside walls of it are; and quite an important one at that, being the principal location in Finnegans Wake.

Rebuilt heavily in the 2000s after semi-dereliction, there is little here from the era of the book and only a plaque and the name of the upstairs restaurant exist as signs of that past.

A fairly normal suburban pub these days, I didn't get a particularly good feeling from the atmosphere and hence didn't stay for much longer than my pint. Others have enjoyed it however, at least the Joycean blogger who wrote this post explaining the background to how the pub became critical to the book.

S2119 Captain Americas

An opportunistic visit here - I had an hour to kill in the Grafton Street area for a late lunch and it was either here or the TGI Fridays on Stephens Green as options. Long-term readers of the blog (both of you) will know my experiences with TGI Fridays; so I decided to try something different this time

I'd actually been to a pub-licenced Captain America's before - in Tallaght - but it has since closed down. At the time, the food was fairly disappointing, mid-2000s style over substance stuff. So I still wasn't expecting much.

This is the original of the chain, approaching 50 years in business; and is now part of the Press Up Group of hotels, bars and restaurants. It has had a pub licence for as long as I can remember, possibly all the way back to its opening day. It's one of the few pubs in Dublin that are entirely (staircase excepted) above the ground floor - the only other one I can think of right now is another Press Up premises, Robertas.

In 1971, an American-style burger joint was quite exciting in Dublin, particularly if it had the pub licence from day one. There's quite a bit of history on display, from genuine early U2 memorabilia all the way down to old menus which are now historical artefacts themselves.

It really isn't much of a place to just go and drink - I'm not sure if you could when it was busy even - and the range of drinks is quite limited. The food, however, was significantly better than I was expecting.

I would suggest the Cashel Blue in the Bacon & Blue burger needs to spend some time on top of the meat on the grill, but otherwise I was pleasantly surprised with something superior to what I would have got in TGIs anyway.

N0127 The Yacht

This pub is very posh. Probably too posh actually - I got odd feelings of having stepped back in to 2007. Nothing actually wrong with that, of course - and it is in a posh area. It has had a recent refurbishment that likely had no expense spared on it and which the owners seem very proud of on their website.

I hadn't intended to do another pub on this trip, but having just had dinner I realised that I had about a fairly substantial amount of time to kill before a bus. So I dropped in for a quick pint here - I will still need to return to the area as I missed Harry Byrne's, but I may as well not waste the opportunity.

I found myself in a conversation with a regular who wanted to know if a boxing match was on that evening - which I had to check online for him as I wouldn't have a clue normally. My initial perception of the pub as posh was confirmed when we ended up discussing local politicians - as you do - and he stated that Tommy Broughan TD would "never be seen here, its too posh". Said regular considered himself similar politically to Broughan but had no such issues drinking there!

N0128 Connollys The Sheds

A medium-sized pub with the recent addition small theatre upstairs, The Sheds claims to date to 1845 and the name refers to an old name for the seaside part of Clontarf back in the days when it was a fishing village. 

I was probably too distracted trying to figure out where to get dinner (it ended up being Beshoffs, eaten in a gale on the seafront the way nature intended) to actually pay much attention to the pub but nothing negative came to my attention anyway.

N1344 & 1007331 Pebble Beach

This is a very rare two-for-one - Pebble Beach in Clontarf still retains two seperate licences for the same premises; one pub and one theatre. This was common during the mid 2000s as the theatre licence allowed later openings but required a "performance"; the pub licence did not require this so could be used to normal opening times. There were about 40 premises with both and only about 5 still retaining them now.

A little bit up a suburban road beside Clontarf bus garage, this is probably as close to a golf clubhouse you're going to get off a golf course. Packed with golf memorabilia and with the "golf course special" of Guinness Mid-Strength on offer, it is even named after a famed US golf course according to its website

Mid-Strength isn't available in many places - I had never noticed it on offer in the previous 350+ pubs in Dublin. I actually think the last time I saw it was in a restaurant/bar off the N4 in Westmeath when it was originally released, and as I was driving. for work, in a branded uniform and vehicle, I was not in any position to try it. So I tried it now.

I can't tell the difference between it and "normal" Guinness. At 2.8% about 1/3rd less alcohol than the original, which isn't as big a drop as between some "families" of beer - McGargles Little Bangin and Big Bangin are 3.8% and 7.1% for instance; but many traditional Guinness drinkers would have you believe that any reduction would make it undrinkable. Which is of course nonsense, as "normal" Guinness has been reduced in strength repeatedly for decades - read through some of the posts on Ronald Pattinsons excellent blog to see the strength at various points past.

There are dedicated beer bloggers, so I shall return to the pub. It's fairly decent, without some of the nastiness that a pub in an area that could be seen as posh can end up with.

N0136 Kavanaghs Marino House

Sometimes I have a specific plan for pubs to hit on a certain day, as I did on the day I visited Kavanaghs. However, I'd forgotten to charge my phone so needed somewhere with a socket so I could check the bus times to go to my planned next pub. Kavanaghs it was then...

This is quite a nice pub. Very much a Dub pub - there is a crystal, probably quarter-size replica of the Sam Maguire behind the bar in the lounge, apparently dating to the 1995 victory.

Every pub was relatively quiet that day - possibly many locals were still a bit tender from the All Ireland win the week before, and Kavanaghs was no exception. The socket was behind the bar and I only had a very short charger with me which resulted in my sitting almost on the bar rather than at it.

Two pints and the bulk of the remainder of my papers later and I had sufficient battery to head on to my original target

N0134 Gaffneys

There were once two Gaffneys pubs in Fairview - the larger, remaining pub and a significantly smaller one a few doors down - which still had some signage until very recently. This smaller pub ran as "Gaffneys Snug" or "Gaffneys Wine Lodge". I'm unsure as to exactly when this closed; it was still listed in Thom's Directory as late as 2008, but it could be quite slow at removing closed premises.

Anyway, there's no pints to be had in the closed pub but there still is in the main one. A large enough premises, I couldn't tell which side was the bar and which the lounge from outside and ended up picking the bar door at random. 

A small sort-of snug, complete that afternoon with someone talking to himself, meets you immediately. It's not the most useful snug when everyone coming and going walks past you, but it is separated from the main bar area. A small enough bar is behind this, with a sort-of lounge behind it. The main lounge is accessible from here as well as from the street.

The pub was relatively quiet  and I was able to get a table to read the paper at while having my pint. The bar has a reasonable selection of draught from multiple suppliers - Franciscan Well and O'Haras as well as the usuals - and four Guinness taps, which suggests that it does get a lot busier at times. 

Seems to be a decent pub anyway. When marking off on my records later, I realised that this was pub #350 as it currently stands. I did actually reach 350 separate premises a few pubs ago, but with some licences removed from the register (Dandelion, The Vaults, Browns Barn) they no longer "count".

N0135 Brú House

This traditional inner-suburban pub was most recently known as Smyths of Fairview, and after a brief closure reopened a few years ago as Brú House Fairview

Brú are one of the longer-running Irish microbreweries and have one other pub, in Newbridge. I'm not personally a huge fan of their products - very much a personal taste thing, they are of perfectly fine quality; and they don't sell much else here. So despite working nearby for two years I never actually dropped in - but now, not working quite as near, I decided to hit the Howth Road area on a quiet afternoon.

Other than the all-Irish, all-micro tap lineup (Brú's full product range, a cider I can't remember and Yellowbelly Citra IPA), this is basically what you'd expect from any other pub in a similar area. Pub grub with only minor differences to the norm, Sky Sports on offer in the bar and a large lounge area to the rear. I had a late lunch and tried their new Session IPA and Dark IPA which are, again, perfectly fine but just not quite to my tastes. All Brú pints are very good value at €4.50 or €5 and were the cheapest pints I saw anywhere all day.

It's a nice enough environment to spend some time, but would appeal massively more to someone who's a fan of Brú's beers.

September 2018 Licence Update

Another small update this month.

Additions:
1014482 Maldron Hotel Kevin Street

There are some interesting renames of the licence owner for a few closed premises that may indicate a reopening in the future (or one that I entirely missed) - namely the former South in Beacon South Quarter and the Corner House in Windy Arbour.