1003697 Lighthouse Cinema

Cinema licences are always a problem for me to get. They are the same category (Theatre) as many nightclubs and some late bars, but the bars are nearly always beyond the ticket check line. Some cinemas hold a licence to allow alcohol to be served at specific screenings and don't even have a bar.

The Lighthouse falls in to the former category, having a small, bottle-only bar on the lowest floor of the complex. Selling a range of (mostly Irish) craft beers and some spirits, you wouldn't spend much time here other than maybe one drink before a screening. But it's there none the less.

S3383 The Alexander Hotel

This one is slightly out-of-order as I completely forgot I'd gone in here. It's that kind of bar.

This is a very generic high-end hotel bar. It is accessible from the street, but I don't see why you'd want to with The Ginger Man basically next door. Whiskey drunk, licence marked off the list, done.

1009733 Arlington Hotel

I had always assumed that Louis Fitzgerald may have been a Fianna Fail supporter, and the set of paintings of Taoisigh that runs from WT Cosgrave to Cowen and no further lining the corridor here may be a further reason to believe so. However, it is just as possible that they were waiting until the end of Kenny's term before commissioning that portrait, and that is only over a year ago.

This hotel specialises in presenting traditional Irish music and dancing to a tourist market, advertising this heavily in tourist publications. As a result it is often very busy and I never had reason to go in; but on a weekday evening in mid December following a gig in The Academy, it wasn't particularly busy. There was a band on, playing... something. I can't remember if it was trad-related or not, on the balance of probabilities I'd go with it being trad.

Considering its usually going to be too busy to go in otherwise there's not much point in recommending people go somewhere - but if you're passing and its not busy, its an OK place to grab a pint, and remind yourself of some of the awful Taosigh past.

N1098 Parnell Heritage Pub

One of the JG Mooney pubs which still stands as a pub premises, this was still branded The Parnell Mooney until its closure for a redevelopment which has yet to occur in the mid 2000s. In 2015, presumably accepting that the development is many years away, the pub reopened.

Fully renovated at the time in a sympathetic style to the age of the pub, it now trades on its history and has a large board in the doorway detailing this, however neglecting to mention the JG Mooney era entirely, thus leaving out the bit most of interest to a pub historian!

Food service is a core part of the operation here, but they are more than willing to let you sit at a table to drink - unlike some food-centric pub I've been in recently that shove you towards bar seating or a perch somewhere. Service is friendly and efficient, including getting pints only on draught on a different floor without issue.

The smallest toilet cubicle I have seen on land (aircraft would beat it easily) features in what must be - there are signs telling you they now have one there - a newly added gents toilets on the top floor.

S0059 Buswells Hotel

I was vaguely hoping to overhear some political machinations here, seeing as the side door of the bar here is within direct sight of the pedestrian exit of Dáil Éireann - and while I did overhear some rather bland constituency topics from a nearby table, I was left without anything worth running to the papers with. 

Recently described as a "Power Hotel" by Forbes for the hotels long-standing political connections, this is a perfectly pleasant, mid-range hotel bar. For reasons described in the article, the owners of the hotel do not go for a high-end fitout lest it repel the long standing political customers. 

Drink options were reasonable, price was also reasonable for the location. Staff seem to put more care and attention in to the service and the bar than would be common in many newer premises.

S0024 Hartigans

After my brief trip to the last decade and general trip around Merrion Row / Baggot Street, I ended up slipping through space and time to end up in, say, Curracloe in 1982. This was acheived by going in to Hartigans nearby on Leeson Street.

Hartigans consists of a small bar decorated with various aging memorabilia, which generally feels like a trip back in time itself; and an L-shaped room behind that, which can't really be described as being anything. It isn't a lounge as it has barely any seats. It isn't a function room as its far too small for that. It isn't just a corridor to the toilets and smoking area, as it's far too large for that. It has the same paint scheme as an unrenovated Social Welfare office.

I've seen this somewhere before. Somewhere not in Dublin, not in this millennium. And it was dated then. However, this is all part of the pubs charm. Prices are not rural Wexford 1982 level, but are more than reasonable for city centre.

Allegedly some things that require the term Allegedly may or may not have happened here, which I'll allow another set of bar bloggers to run the risk of an expensive court case in skirting around.

One final thing I noticed on my way out is that they have a framed review of the pub from an unspecified publication in an unspecified time period on the wall. This review gives the pub a decent overall score, made up of extremely high scores for most elements and a mediocre score for the toilets. Some things have barely changed!

1010310 Napper Tandys

I find this recently renamed pub's name to be a potential cause of confusion. There was a very long standing pub of the same name on Bride Street, which was demolished for apartments in 1999 - and has not, as yet, been redeveloped. Additionally, there was a pub of this name in the successful Dublin-set RTE series Love/Hate.

The operators of this premises have settled on this name regardless of, or possibly even due to, these other pubs - fictional and former.

This was until recently Marcels restaurant and bar (the bar being briefly called Chambers), but the entire site is now Napper Tandys. It is still operating primarily as a food venue, with those there solely to drink directed towards bar seating rather than the tables. Its OK as a bar but suspect it could get extremely crowded if they maintain the seating rules.

S0002 Doheny & Nesbitts

This pub has strong political and economics connections, quite specifically to the early days of Progressive Democrats party and people involved with it at that time. To that end, an area of the upstairs was reserved on the evening of my visit for a private party held by Tom Parlon, one-term PD TD and head of the Construction Federation of Ireland.

Its a nice looking pub, but that's about all I think it has going for it. Otherwise it was an all-round reminder of an era of the past I'd prefer we don't go back to, although it seems we are. Loud, obnoxious middle-aged men made up much of the crowd here, relatively early in the evening for that too. There's drink perching shelves in the corridors towards the toilets, showing how crammed it can get. People sit and stand in front of the bars, completely unaware that someone may actually want to order a drink.

This was pub #400 for me, well, #400 on the floating timeline of what is open. Its actually more like #410 when closed down premises are added or #420 if you added in premises that used to have pub & theatre licences seperately. I had actually intended somewhere else in the area as #400 but it didn't seem like a suitable night - it may be #500 or I'll never mention it again.

S0028 Foleys

This premises operates as two partially seperated "pubs", Foleys and Reillys. Foleys was the specific side I visited.

A rather underwhelming range of drinks - limited in range but not in price - and poor, expensive food were what awaited me. I've recently talked about a fantastic steak sandwich in a Dublin pub - this was basically the opposite. Gristly and overdone, it had to be removed from the bread to be cut, at least for anyone with human rather than animal teeth.

There's a relatively high density of pubs around here, and its becomes increasingly clear over the next few reviews that I don't really like any of them. This wasn't the worst, but with such poor rivals that isn't actually a good thing.

S0056 The Bailey

This relatively food- (and these days tourist-) oriented pub on Duke Street was one of a few glaring misses among the long-established city centre pubs for me. A relatively narrow and long pub, the sort-of heated outdoor seating area probably has as much capacity as the entire indoors does.

There's a few things of interest here in what is other a relatively generic - but perfectly fine - pub. One is that they had matchbooks, something rarely seen in Ireland since the 2004 smoking ban. One was acquired for my small collection of pub bits, to be placed alongside a token and bag from Token and a toothpick book from The Legal Eagle.

The other is something historical. For many years, the pub had a basically inexplicable statue of a sailor with a sextant on the wall, but this has since gone missing

1002785 The Malt / The Malthouse

This pub has a slightly different name on its outside sign than on all its internal signage, which is at least a bit confusing.

It also smelled of vomit and there was a couple having a very public, very detailed argument about presents they'd bought for each other. That sort of set the mood and I left after I finished my pint as I didn't really want to hang around. Ticked off the list. I headed around the corner to Harkins for food and decent conversation instead.

I'm now up to date with pubs, this being #397 on the current register - if anyone is trying to keep track by reviews they may notice that there is usually not 50 between "landmark" round number, due entirely to visited pubs being removed or occasionally readded to the register; and the even rarer occasion of realising I had never marked a pub off the map - which has happened twice recently with N0081 Tolka House and S0185 O'Briens which I had been in about 8 and 10 years ago respectively. So the numbers are celebratory at best but I still try to mention them.

#400 should happen before year-end, which is quite an achievement with #300 in February and #350 only in September. This has been heavily assisted by a few research-and-bagging days which will likely not be repeated as frequently in 2019, mainly as I'm nearly over that specific stage of research.

S1465 Bakers

I initially got the impression that this pub had fallen to tourist trade - being relatively near to Guinness and on the main route back in - but a quick look at their Facebook page shows regulars and community involvement that can only come from having proper locals trade. So it was just a facet of being there on a weekday afternoon that meant it was mostly tourists there.

I should probably have gone in to the bar, as there isn't a lot to say about the lounge. Its decorated with the fairly common setup of probably-repro drinks signage, with some sporting elements added in including a set of well-thumbed sports biographies on the upper mezzanine level. The food looked decent but I didn't partake; the drink was fine - being all macro I went for my current and probably from-now-on choice of Smithwicks, proving that I am in fact turning in to my grandfather. At least I hope I am, as he managed to retain about as much hairline as I have now until he was 89!

S1467 Tom Kennedys

The most surprising element of this quite traditional city centre pub was that they had Beamish on tap, so close to Guinness and all its tourist market - and whatever, if anything, remains of the loyal staff base. As I was heading to a work event in the Guinness Storehouse I decided to partake in a pint of Beamish as the likely only non-Diageo product of the evening.

This is quite a decent pub although there's not really a lot to say about it. I'd imagine it gets quite busy before and after Vicar Street gigs - oddly, while I have been to multiple gigs there, they have nearly always been with someone who was not drinking and driving back for some reason so I have never been in before. Interestingly, on the walls among the photos of old Dublin, they have a print of this photo of the pub which sat opposite Vicar Street and sacrificed its licence to it.

S4201 Beacon Hotel

I think I had actually had lunch here some time ago in a previous job that involved regular visits to the adjacent hospital. However, I'd never counted it and had opportunity to have lunch here again, with sufficient time (5 hours) to ensure I didn't fall foul of the new drink driving rules off one pint.

This is a very boring hotel bar with fairly mediocre pints and very mediocre food. There's nowhere else nearby (since Copper closed down about 4 years ago, anyway) although you could head over to Ollies in Ballaly- without even being there I'd guess it might be more interesting.

N0623 Bradys Castleknock Inn

It may have been subconscious - I do read the commercial property pages in the papers, deliberately; and check the 4 Dublin planning authorities sites - but as I walked up to Bradys I wondered if it was going to be a redevelopment target. A large two floor building with an extensive carpark, in an established housing area and near a railway station it seemed ripe for someone to buy, knock and shove apartments on it.

And it appears that's the plan. Although I had expected them to retain a pub on the site - there aren't that many nearby - there is none in the current submitted plans.

Approaching the pub there is a blank enough door to the side in to the bar and a larger one in to the lounge. I assumed the bar was closed due to said door, and went in to the lounge. It turned out the bar wasn't closed and the lounge was basically empty.

After a local found a barwoman to serve me, I retired to a corner and wrote some of the longer ago posts on here - almost catching up to the present for once, until my laptop battery died. It's a decent suburban boozer and I'm sure it'll be missed by locals - but there must be more value in the land for the owners.

N2354 12th Lock Hotel

Recently-ish reopened, this "boutique hotel" is in a small building between the Royal Canal and the Dublin-Sligo railway line at Castleknock. I wasn't sure if it was a modified original building, but it appears from the sale documents from 2012 that describe it as "purpose built hotel" that it isn't.

Now for a bit of a diversion - there's an oddity, but mostly explainable, in Dublin that the Grand Canal has or had pubs at nearly every lock and the Royal Canal doesn't - and the few along the Royal Canal are mostly recent enough builds. The probable explanation here is that passenger traffic along the Royal Canal ended a lot earlier and was replaced by the Midland Great Western Railway at a significantly improved speed and less stops.

So, confusingly, there was a "Twelfth Lock" pub at the same numbered lock of the Grand Canal, along the Lucan-Newcastle Road. As far as I know, this burnt down in the early 1990s when it was named the Fox's Head and was not replaced despite receiving planning to do so.

Anyway, the 12th Lock of now is on the Royal Canal, is a hotel and is very much run as one, although if you tell the waitstaff guarding the seating that you just want a drink there is no problem in buying same and selecting your seat.

Its a hotel bar all the way through and hence not the best place to pop in for a pint alone; although I'd think that it'd be a nice place for walkers along the tow path to rest for a bit.

I live near the Royal Canal myself, and have never seen as many boats along the rest as are berthed along the canal here, so there is something else to see if visiting.

1003470 Canal Bar

This large building beside Ashtown railway station is a pub I pass up to ten times a week, but had never called in to before. There is a restaurant upstairs but the pub itself still has extremely high roof. The decor in general is a bit confusing - jokey posters, TVs in the toilets, netting on the ceiling. The pub has been here for a fair few years so I assume there was an original theme which has been modified over the years

There's a decent drinks menu and the food options look fine also - and there's always that separate restaurant upstairs if need be.

 

I probably rushed my visit here as I was planning to visit some other pubs along the railway line in a fairly limited timeframe, and kept calculating my time to home as if I was still in the city centre - forgetting I had already done a portion of the journey. This affected my next visit as well until I remembered I wasn't drinking on Pearse Street or otherwise adjacent to the Dublin City Archives where I had started the day.

N0207 Dillons

Every pub reopening is welcome, particularly when it is a premises which has been shut for a prolonged period of time. However, sometimes one is a little annoying to me in terms of my completion map - popping a blue pin up in a sea of green. Dillons did that, so I ensured it went green as soon as possible - I believe it was the second night when I turned up.

This was Liam Walshes / The Furry Glen (no, not the gay night of the same name - the pub was called that) in the past and had been closed for many, many years. It re-appeared on the licence register a while ago retaining its original number - the N and S series numbers are from pre-2006 or so, and reopened in mid-November.

Operated by the same owners as S1441 The Lamplighter (which actually closed for a refit immediately on opening here, with staff moving over for the interim), this pub has been renovated to a clean and modern standard but is still very traditional. There's a totally standard macro lineup of drinks available.

Friendly and approachable staff complete the setup here. Its a busy street for pubs (albeit there will probably never be as many as there were as recently as the early 2000s - Saddlers, Millennium and Judge Darleys all unlikely to return) so hopefully they can carve out their niche.

S0184 Leeson Lounge

I keep saying I'll catch up with posting, and I never do... this is from some weeks ago at this stage.

This is a rather odd pub for Dublin, and I quite like it based off my visit. A rambling living room of a pub, this is probably the closest to the lounge in a 70s house of any pub lounge in the city. I do presume this is the aesthetic it was going for.

Other pubs on the same night had been quite busy, but I was able to find a massive sofa in an alcove all to myself. Rather oddly, despite the pub being perfectly dry, there was a painting on the wall which had been completely consumed by mildew to the point of being unintelligible.

There was a nice, relaxed atmosphere here with a fairly interesting range of customers. The pub has live music sessions frequently, with quite a lot of jazz and blues on the schedules I've seen - I wonder if some of this moved from from JJs after it closed for renovation/redevelopment.

I can't remember what I drank considering how long ago this was, let alone the range of drinks on offer. If it was either amazingly good or incredibly bad I suspect I'd have remembered!

December 2018 licence update

A relatively small but quite significant update this month:

New

1014544 The Ivy, Dawson Street - I wasn't expecting this to offer drinks without food, and indeed it may not, but it is licenced to

1014816 Canal Boat Restaurant, Mespil Road

Reappearance

N0256 Union Cafe, Churchtown Road - former McGowans licence reappears under its original licence number for the new restaurant (with full licence) here.

Reapperance/renumber

1014760 Richmond Gastropub, formerly N1113 Village Inn, Tyrconnell Road. I have drunk here before under the old guise.