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.

S0170 The Wellington

Wellington. Waterloo. Baggot Street could be any High Street in England with these pub names. This one at least comes with less risk of Abba outbreaks amongst patrons who think they can sing.

This is an actually tiny - it looks bigger from outside, which is not a common occurrence -  traditional city pub just a little bit outside the centre, sited as it is just outside the canals.

Live music is apparently offered here - I'm not sure where they fit it. Drink options are not good, but the atmosphere should make up for that.

S0172 The Waterloo

This most English named of pubs is a long and narrow premises on Baggot Street with a busy bar downstairs and a quieter (at time of my visit) craft-specific upstairs bar. Which I wasn't aware of, and ordered something far less interesting off the downstairs taps as a result before ending up upstairs anyway.

The major defining feature of this pub is a huge painting of a times past Baggot Street along the wall opposite the bar downstairs - my poor low-light photo does not give it justice. This painting does unfortunately show how much more interesting the building that the nearby Searsons pub is in is, but it does show that they didn't censor the artist at all.

Apparently there is an upstairs outdoor area, which may have been nice considering the utterly abnormal warmth on the evening (mid November - in Ireland) I visited on; but I didn't notice it as I don't generally look for the smoking area in pubs.

S0183 Ryans Beggars Bush

My quest for dinner, as mentioned in the previous post, continued. I should probably have either gone back to The Old Spot or across the road to knock Chophouse off the list but for some reason I went down Haddington Road, and ended up in Ryans.

Ryans doesn't do food in the evenings. Eventually, Tolteca on Baggot Street sorted that out for me, but I only found out after I had ordered a pint that this is a lunchtime (or pre-booked party) food venue

Like most pubs in this area, Ryans is set up to cope with match day crowds with a substantial outdoor seating area to the front. It was an abnormally warm night for mid-November so I decided to sit outside - and was joined by some other non-smokers in doing so.

On non-match days the pub seems to mostly draw on the tech industry nearby for its patronage - at least based on one visit, which can be extremely unrepresentative.

I think it was a mostly macro lineup here, but I was hungry and grumpy and had basically ordered a pint on false pretenses caused by Google Maps so I can't actually remember what I had.

S0177 The Bath

Sometimes you end up taking an opinion of a pub from a first impression which was mistaken - when I entered and ordered here I was presented with a macro-only tap lineup. There's craft options on a second set of taps to the rear of the bar.

However, the second impression here also created an instant negative - there was an overwhelming smell of creosote from some of the furniture which I assume is set up to be brought outside on match days - free up standing room inside and give perching space outside.

I was looking for somewhere to get dinner at the time - the smell of likely carcinogens in the air alone did not kill my appetite, but no wait staff coming over to me for 20 minutes ensured I went elsewhere.

Should be fine for a pint on a match day but I wouldn't bother otherwise.

1003568 The Old Spot

Lucinda O'Sullivan described this as a restaurant with a bar. It is.

Outside of major sporting events, where more space is turned over to drinking and less to eating; this is a high end restaurant with a very small bar on the way in. The bar itself is fine, with a decent range of beers, but it was difficult to find a seat early on a mid-month Friday evening - although had I wanted to eat, there were seats aplenty available.

If you want to drink in the area, there are other pubs nearby. If you want to grab a pint before eating here, they've got a more than acceptable selection.

S0302 Purty Kitchen

This is the Dun Laoghaire/Monkstown premises, not the now renamed Temple Bar superpub. I really should investigate the link, if any, between them (and possibly S1486 Purty Central in Clondalkin)!

This pub claims to be established in 1728 and, unlike when a city venue makes a claim to antiquity, I'd have reason to believe this one. Located on a street with a name prone to cause certain Irish language activists to have kittens - Old Dunleary Road, this would have been a roadhouse of sorts prior to the dawn of the railways and now, some centuries later, has a reputation as a music venue and also targets food customers.

From the perspective of pub-bagging, its quite similar to most larger suburban pubs with nothing jumping out to make it a must-visit, but the gigs upstairs have a wide appeal and are likely to draw people in from far enough away.

S0264 O'Loughlins

Sometimes a pubs reputation precedes, often negatively, sometimes positively. In the case of O'Loughlins, there are huge amounts of vaguely accurate references to it whenever old fashioned/traditional pubs get discussed, with claims of various levels of truth being made.

Two recurrent ones come up about O'Loughlins, amongst huge amounts of one-off claims. One can be dismissed as impossible - that it hasn't got water. The HSE would have it closed down years ago if this was the case. The second one is that is has no till. This is factually incorrect, but as the till is a Victorian ornament and its always open cash drawer is used only occasionally used, the result is much the same.

The pub is nearly invisible online - beyond the aforementioned semi-factual posts and entries on a few pub listing sites there is basically nothing else . The bulk of the results are actually for McLoughlins, a completely different pub nearby. But it very much exists and has a regular customer base, greeted by name by the barman. I was all but instructed to take the seat at the bar of a departing customer (by said customer) when I walked in, and had two of the cheaper pints - and a bag of crisps - that you're likely to find. There's a proper sense of community with the regulars and the staff; and notices up for various events including a charity BBQ night (In December. In Ireland!)

The pub has 7 taps, all Diageo except Heineken. There is a small selection of spirits and liquers, many of them with dust coating the bottles from how rarely they are used. There are a few under-counter fridges of mixers and bottled cider and beers including, amazingly, a small amount of Irish craft. Cash is left strewn around the shelves in a manner which clearly has some logic to the barman, but none to the observer. The overall feel is of a small town pub in the West, not one on the main street of a busy suburb.

S0276 McKennas

The second of my Dun Laoghaire pubs, this one is still registered with Revenue as "The Yacht Tavern", leading to some slight confusion when doing my customary Google to make sure I'd got the right pub.

I decided to go to this one specifically as it is *not* on a major street in Dun Laoghaire. Down a side street, this premises has a small bar and a large lounge, all very recently refitted to a very high standard; so much so that the daytime horse racing on the TVs felt rather out of place. If you weren't aware it was here there is a chance that you'd completely miss it.

Pub seems decent, however only the bar was open when I visited and I expect the crowd to be very different when busier - for starters, there wasn't a single woman present!

S0265 Dunphys

Dun Laoghaire has a particularly high density of pubs along Georges Street, even with some closures over the past decade, both permanent (the shopping centre redevelopment) and potentially temporary. It w

There are multiple reasons for this, including the former mailboat and later car ferry traffic; being a commuter town from the early Victorian era onwards and the extra commercial status as a township it held from about the same time until the early-90s split-up of Dublin County Council.

Dunphy's is a fine example of a pub from this era, with a Victorian or at least Victorianesque interior (I have little knowledge on how to tell the age of woodwork!) that rivals the famed list of Victorian pubs in Dublin.

I was drawn in here by the food menu inside the door, but it turned out that the chef works split shifts on a Monday at least and I had missed the end of the lunch service. However, soup and a toasted special were still available to be prepared by the barman and these were bought.

I had ventured out to Dun Laoghaire with a dual purpose - visit some of its many pubs, and to visit the Local Studies department of the vast DLR Lexicon library. I expected this to be similar to the reading room in the Dublin City Library & Archives on Pearse Street, with the most commonly requested items on open shelving, and a decent number of computer terminals for accessing online resources. Instead you get a huge hall with the bulk of the collection shelved - and locked behind glass; and no staff available without appointment; although single item requests can be facilitated by the main desk.

There was one book here which is unique to DLR across all public libraries in Ireland, namely a 1949 tour guide entitled "Where To Drink" by Tom Merry of the still-extant Licensing World trade magazine. This book covers all 32 counties to some extent, but Dublin particularly and has a mix of reviews and placed advertising from many pubs. The print and photographic quality is incredible for a book of that era, particularly printed so soon after the end of WWII and the limited resources that resulted. There is also a copy in the National Library, but zero copies are showing for sale on Alibris or AbeBooks.

S2738 TGI Fridays Stephens Green

See Previous Reviews.

Nearly done, and actually as the Dundrum licence is shared with Dante Pizza I don't even need to endure this again.

S0012 The Duke

This historic premises sees very significant tourist traffic and is the starting point of the popular Literary Pub Crawl, however a quiet, wet Tuesday night in November is not one where there are many tourists around to fill it.

I was seeking dinner and was mulling over going to the TGI Fridays on Stephens Green to knock it off the list (which I did do a few days later), but particularly poor weather meant I wanted to get in to somewhere quickly and The Duke was nearer to my previous visit. Extremely rapid service meant I had a meal ordered quickly and already on my table when I returned from washing my hands.

This isn't an area of the city I would ever have much reason to drink in, and have found pubs in the area often unenterable due to the volume of tourists, but this is a nice enough pub.

S0010 The Dawson Lounge

Any time a pub has a superlative claim, due caution must be applied. In this case, "The Smallest Pub In Dublin" is the claim, and with about 40% of the potential claimaints visited, I haven't seen anything smaller. The claim of "smallest bar" is also made elsewhere but refers to a subsection of a not particularly small premises. (Note the use of the former name for this premises on that post, confusingly Ron Blacks was also a former name of 37 Dawson Street)

This pub really is tiny. There is seating for about 20 and maybe standing space for the same again, at a push. Its also completely underground, with wood panelling on the walls and ceilings and as a result gives an overwhelming impression of drinking on an ancient boat, rather than in a land-based pub.

Some English tourists appeared to have succumbed to the confusing atmosphere, seeing as they were asking the barman whether an IPA (Franciscan Well Chieftain) was "actually an ale", as "Irish ales are lagers, aren't they?" They moved on to confuse bar staff elsewhere luckily!

S0145 The Square Ball

I've had a more productive period of pub visiting recently than any time since the start of the blog, so while this was still in November, it is so far down my list of missing writeups it may as well have been last year!

This is a sister sports bar to N0210 The Back Page in Phibsboro and bears an obvious familial resemblence in terms of the interior and the drinks offerings. It is significantly smaller, though; and offers a food menu based around charcoal-cooked rotisserie chicken, when The Back Page has a pizza joint.

The location of the bar means that it could get a sizeable office crowd in and this may be why they have a decent and varied no- and low-alcohol drinks menu, something I've never seen being emphasised elsewhere. 0.5% beers and mocktails are listed alongside session-strength beers and half-measure or UK measure based cocktails. I would assume this menu, or similar, is available in the other Bodytonic venues also though.

November 2018 Licence Update

The first Revenue licence file of the new licencing year has arrived, which is always the longest and most complicated to process. Because the 'removals' are mostly just premises which are waiting renewal, they can't be evaluated until next October, so this leaves very little else this month

Renumbered
1014762 Hilton Garden Inn, Custom House Quay - formerly N1900

Reappeared after 1+ year
N0197 The Tap/Taproom 47, North King Street. This has been under refurbishment since early summer.
N0229 Dolly Heffernans, Mulhuddart. This is still long-term closed.

Booze2Go, a pub chain that wasn't

Most of the time, a pub is a pub. Sometimes they're actually a theatre, or a hotel bar, that doesn't easily serve members of the public but does still retain the licence to do so. An

Very occasionally, they're an off-licence, using a pub licence which provides them with the rights to sell off-sales until 10pm. There are a limited number of premises doing this in Dublin to this day, S1349 Spar Baggot Street being probably the most notable - this was the well known Henry Grattan pub and has retained the licence.

There are also some very high end winebars and cafes which were pubs and allow drinking on premises with corkage paid - S0014 Probus Wines and S0395 Whelehans Wine Bar are notable here.

However, prior to the reduction of off-sale hours in 2008, there was a chain which made good use of pub licences abilities to sell til closing time . Every single branch of Booze2Go was a former pub, using the pub licence and its inherent ability to sell alcohol for sale off the premises. They had at least 7 branches that I have managed to trace so far.

The last year of the full chain appears to have been about 2009 - presumably the recovery in the pub market made premises more valuable as pubs after this. Handily for historical purposes, 2009 is also the year of the first Streetview pass of Dublin, and the Irn Bru colour scheme (orange and royal blue) is quite easily identifiable

Currently operating pubs that were Booze2Go branches in 2009:

N0097 Paddle & Peel, Bolton Street
S1472 Pifko, Ushers Quay
N0008 Mullets, Amiens Street
N0068 Glynns, Dorset Street
S1470 Agnes Brownes, Thomas Street

Two are still off-licences - well, one is a previously mentioned high end wine retailer.

S0014 Probus Wines, Fenian Street
N0104 - former Forum, Parnell Street - this may not have been the last name prior to Booze2Go. This is now branded as "Off Licence", without the garish paint scheme. Whether they sell Nigerian made Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, the product Forum specialised in, is not something I have yet checked!

Some additional info on two additional branches was provided on Twitter:

There was also one on Meath street now trading as Lucky’s, another that was formerly The Lantern in Harold’s cross now closed. All premises belong to Dominic Lydon and we’re leased to the one company who in turn ran up massive debts to suppliers & landlord before jumping ship

— graham mooney (@Graham_Mooney1) November 12, 2018

S0158 John Clarke & Sons

It's not a common event for a pub to move buildings - shops move, offices move, occasionally restaurants move - but pubs barely ever do so. There are a few historical examples, e.g. Barnstormers with Capel Street and Townsend Street incarnations, but I can't think of many recently.

This pub is the exception. John Clarke's operated in Ringsend in what is now S0160 Merry Cobbler for many years, but the pub was taken by receivers in 2012, according to the Irish Times. The family reopened in a nearby (550m walk) premises which had itself closed down shortly afterwards, effectively moving the pub - but within range of most previous local customers.

There's a nice traditional bar here which is either present from some of the previous operators on the premises, or is a very good reproduction. The rest of the pub wasn't open yet when I visited, presumably it would be later on or on Saturdays.

1003456 The Shipwright

I made a mistake on visiting this premises - don't be the first person of the day to have any Diageo product from a line. There wasn't a huge range on offer, so a pint of Hop House (which probably hadn't been bought since last night) was procured and then drunk with grimaces. I normally make a judgement call - or just ask the barman - but forgot to do either this time.

A large premises, this trades as a guesthouse but also has a still substantial bar and an off-licence on site also. It would appear to be the largest of the pubs in Ringsend Village but it was also the quietest at the time I visited - early evening on a Friday.

1013579 Luckys

This is a recent reopening of a relatively long-term closed pub and is one of a number of slightly similar premises demonstrating the creeping gentrification of The Liberties.

A mostly craft beer bar with pizza available - this could also describe 1011790 The Fourth Corner for instance, there is also more than a passing resemblance to S1449 The Jug on the roughly parallel Francis Street, including being relatively long and narrow. However, it doesn't have the seating layout issues of The Jug.

What differentiates these pubs is the atmosphere, that provided by the staffing and other customers - as the music choices are often somewhat similar and few have TVs. The atmosphere here is pretty good, although the slight drizzle outside and Kinnegar Rustbucket on tap may have encouraged me to stay long enough to experience a bit more of it than some smash-and-grab visits for stats let me to

S1497 Harkins (The Old Harbour)

Ah, a pub that promotes itself around one of its customers dying after drinking there! Sounds like a lovely place....

...which it is really. And actually the Behan link isn't played on as much as it used to be, although as there will be literary tourists visiting it is still mentioned.

A relatively small building, the bar downstairs serves a reasonable range of product but the restaurant upstairs is the main attraction. Fairly newly fitted out in a style that I can only describe as "very fancy greasy spoon", the menu of pub grub standards is done to an exceptional quality. This seems to be a new addition, indeed my menu had "pre launch menu 2018" printed on the top of it.

The pub puts up signage to lure tourists away from the Guinness Storehouse and indeed is the closest pub to it in walking distance terms, however there were only a few tourists there when I visited - the same tourists had even been in S1502 McCanns previously when I was there and clearly made the better choice by moving to Harkins.

S1502 McCanns

I've fallen horribly behind on writing up pubs in decent time after visiting them - my previous moan that my month by month stats would be off didn't even go far enough as the next few were in early October.

This is a very small pub adjacent to the Pearse Lyons Distillery on James Street and recently enough bought by the owners of said distillery, Alltech. It serves little other than Alltech-owned beers (Stationworks Newry products) at unjustifiably high prices for D8; although the spirit selection extends rather a lot further beyond the owners products.

The drinks expensive, the toilets were manky and someone nicked my seat while I was down there. There's far better pubs on the street.

S1437 Leonards Corner

This is another of the Dublin pubs which shares its name with the adjacent junction, although in this case I'm not 100% certain that the pub was named that first.

This is a fairly traditional suburban pub, but had one feature I have never seen in Dublin before - a standalone bookie plying his trade with a laptop and cashbox in the corner.

This isn't the most uncommon thing to see in rural areas - indeed, "lotto agents" were common in areas without shops that could justify a leased line for the original lotto terminals - but the general density of bookies shops in Dublin usually means that their presence in pubs is limited to pens and slips. However, there doesn't actually seem to be any of the main brands nearby, with an independent in Harolds Cross the nearest I could find on Google. Obviously there has to be demand for his services.

S1434 57 The Headline

This relatively large suburban craft beer bar was formerly Thomas Keogh's - as the now covered by a neighbouring building ghost sign showed until quite recently - but as traded as a variant of The Headline for quite some time. A recent-ish addition is a specialty gin bar in the basement, which I thought was actually called Thomas Keogh's on the menus, but doesn't have that name on the website at least.

There's an extensive food menu here, but I was hoping on getting a cancellation in either Bastible or the Clanbrassil House so I didn't try anything. I didn't get a seat in either and ended up in Pinheads Pizza instead, which was probably equal or superior in terms of cost to quality anyway!

1011790 The Fourth Corner

Recently reopened,  as Nash's this bar was a fake-traditional boozer on the ground floor of a small apartment block and the last pub standing of the Four Corners of Hell (another link to Come Here To Me, essential reading for anyone interested in Dublin social history of any kind). [A second Four Corners of Hell on the Northside was referenced in newspapers and will be the subject of a future post, but is not really relevant here]

After some years of closure and a sale of the building, The Fourth Corner mixes some traditional elements that should bring in a local audience with modern twists. A set of cocktails named after the best known names for the four pubs of the Corners along with an order to table option for the Dublin Pizza Company are the most obvious modern factors.

This area of the city has been denuded of pubs since the 1960s and any reopenings need to be welcomed. Only 1008283 Fallons remains otherwise of the substantial number of pubs on Patrick Street and New Street; and Bride Street nearby has also been wiped clean. A decent reopening with a good nod to the past and an eye to the future is something I'd hope will survive here.

S0117 The Lord Edward

Getting in to this pub involved some slight confusion over the door. It's tiny. The pub itself is quite small, although checking its website (as I normally do when writing the post on a pub) shows that I missed "one of the best-kept secrets" in the upstairs lounge.

A small enough pub of long standing in one of the few original buildings in its surroundings, the pub was probably less well known than the seafood restaurant on the second floor, which closed a few years back. The entire area around the pub has been heavily redeveloped, and the photo on the Come Here To Me article about it shows it standing alone in 1979.

Once I found my way inside, it was surprisingly easy to find a seat for a Saturday afternoon. A decent selection of pints and a good mix of locals with some tourists made for a enjoyable hour or so.

1004917 Lemon & Duke

Once upon a time, as an F1-obsessed early teenager, I was determined that I would go out to Eddie Irvine's Cocoon bar off Grafton Street. Everything about his image and how the bar was presented in the media appealed to me.

By the time I'd turned 18, the effective death of Jordan F1 (they continued to exist in that year, but a shell of the former team) and continuing decline of the actual appeal of watching F1 (that continues to this day) meant I had no interest anymore and I never actually went there. It seems its appeal waned for everyone else also as it closed some years later in 2009, albeit amidst a bloodbath in the pub industry - as the reference to Thomas Read Group's issues in that article attest to.

Still, the premises lived on in new guises. After a period as the Grafton Lounge, the new incarnation as Lemon and Duke is now again part-owned by sports stars, although of a less money driven and still engaging to watch variety.

The pub is very fancy and very southside, neither of which usually makes me like a place. However, it doesn't take either to excess and, once you get past the wait staff at the door making it feel a bit like a restaurant, it's fine. The downstairs seating area (near the toilets unfortunately, but there aren't many other reasons for a modern pub to have a basement) seems particularly cosy as a place to have a small group.

The bar claims to be one of two places, along with The Bridge 1859*, to have unpastuerised tanked Pilsner Urquell in Ireland, which I forgot to actually try. It does seem a bit of a marketing gimmick but there's good reasons it could actually have a positive affect on taste. The connections with the sister venue extend to the barmats which have one pub on each side; a minor cost saving and a decent marketing opportunity in one.


*one of the premises I visited pre-blog, but also pre- its current name. My one and only drink there when it was called Bellamys, three weeks underage, during the BT Young Scientist exhibition. At least I wasn't wearing my school uniform, which another nearby pub served me in!

S0111 The Old Stand

This and the next few pubs were actually visited in September. I'll forget this when doing my month on month comparison at the end of the year, but I can't backdate them or they'll never appear as new updates.

The Old Stand is a heavily rugby themed pub, with photos and newspaper clippings on the wall relating the name to the 1920s East Stand in the original Lansdowne Road stadium. However, the pub's website gives a claim of 300+ years of a pub on the site, and I do have a former name recorded on the map.

This is quite a small pub, with a bar on the Exchequer Street side and a small lounge of sorts behind. A full food service is offered, which is rare in a premises this small. Anyone male of any stature will have to watch their head the entire way down to the gents.

This is a decent traditional city centre pub all told, but the location (and the menu) mean it is probably becoming more of a tourist haunt than anything else.

October 2018 Licence Update and Year-on-Year check

This is the last full licence file of the licencing year so is the one that year-on-year comparisons are made against.

Additions:
1014121 Lucky Duck, Aungier Street
1014503 Hotel 7, Gardiner RowLucky Duck, Aungier Street
S0243 Comans/Bottlers Bank, Rathgar. This has been AWOL off the register for some time but the Bottlers Bank element of the pub has been trading nearly the whole time.
S1268 Rathfarnham House, Rathfarham. I believe this is still a creche so not sure why it has reappeared!


Renumbered
1014500 Trinity City Hotel, Pearse Street renumbered from 1013580 (and it had only been renumbered very recently!)
1014505 Clayton Hotel Clonshaugh renumbered from N2575
1014606 Clayton Hotel, Donnybrook renumbered from S3568


The following licences are closed (to the best of my knowledge) and have not appeared on the register in the 2017/18 licencing year so will be moved to red pins on the map. Some of those I did from the 2016/17 year reappeared again over the year though.

1008105 Eden, Sycamore Street
1001897 Bunker/Carbon, Point Village (this is physically gone now I believe, for the development of the Exo Building)
1009202 Hangar, Andrews Lane (demolished for redevelopment as a hotel)
N0308 Garristown Inn, Garristown
N1117 Blackhorse Inn, Inchicore
N2004 Zanzibar, Ormond Quay (site to be redeveloped as a hotel)
N2581 Madison, Tallaght
S0149 Howl At The Moon, Mount Street (site to be redeveloped as a hotel)
S0228 Castle Inn, Rathfarnham
S3578 Fortunestown Inn (Molly Heffernans), Fortunestown

Not a closed premises, but Pebble Beach in Clontarf appears to have dropped its second licence, 1007331, which was a theatre licence legacy from the old days of later opening.

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.

1001412 Bord Gais Energy Theatre

The first premises I've covered where I didn't have to pay for a pint all night - but its not blogger freebies (50 Twitter followers and 1 RSS subscriber doesn't attract anything), but related to working in broadcasting.

Bord Gais Energy Rewards had a media 'pub quiz' last night in the Club section of the BGE Theatre. We came joint second by one point, annoyingly. 

The Club is a small enough room on the 5th floor of the theatre, above the auditorium and with a small outdoor area which I actually forgot to go in to - I don't think it overlooks Grand Canal Dock but rather Macken Street which isn't quite as interesting a view!

Heineken have the supply contract here, but the range of taps was even smaller than normal - no Tiger, so just Heineken or Murphys on draught. This may just be in the Club, though. 

I'll be here for a gig or show at some point, its pretty inevitable, so I will see more than one small room - but any part of the licenced premises counts for the stats.

1006793 3 Spirits

This is a very interesting pub. This is a Brazilian bar - an actual Brazilian bar, not a theme pub. We have plenty of theme pubs for various nationalities around but few are actually primarily used by their own ex-pats. As anyone Irish who has travelled around the world and seen Irish or English theme bars, this is the norm really.

However, there were very few non-Brazilians in 3 Spirits - I was drinking with a former colleague (who is Irish) and his wife (who is Brazilian) so even my party didn't really contribute to that!

Offering relatively cheap drinks and a decent/inexpensive menu of mostly Brazilian food, and samba musicians who were pausing for the Brazilian domestic football match on the big screens, you could possibly think you were actually in Brazil - except for the layout of the bar resembling a hotel lobby.

The layout of the bar and entrance are not what you would consider as inviting, but the busy and welcoming bar inside is worth the trip. My picanha 'burger' - chopped steak rather than minced - was one of the dearest items on the food menu and well worth it.

1011776 Gresham Hotel

The worst pint (of a mass produced lager) I've been served in a pub in some time, some typos that were far funnier after a few pints than they are now ("Soop" on the chalkboard, for instance), vast amounts of staff milling around not doing very much. Extremely poor standard for what is meant to be a high class hotel and certainly not living up to the former reputation

One oddity is cocktail menus that are in Spanish first, due to the Riu Plaza branding now applied to the hotel. What proportion of their customers speak Spanish as their first language I don't know but I doubt it is particularly high.

N1898 Caulfields Hotel

This pub is an oddly shaped bar on the ground floor of one of the few 1-star hotels in Dublin, however it is important to note that Irish star ratings are on hotel and room features, not perceived quality! Also, my experience of some of the other 1-star hotels bars have been superior to some of the 4- and 5- star properties anyway.

The bar itself has a seating area inside the front windows overlooking Dorset Street, a small spine with tables down the side of the building and a bar with some seats and a tiny outdoor smoking area at the back. Everything is in decent condition and clean; and the prices are quite low for somewhere so central. Signage indicates this is also a restaurant however I didn't see any menus or anyone eating.

N0024 Hogan Stand

Another traditional outer city centre pub in an established area - albeit one which equips itself to deal with occasional influxes of hundreds of extra customers due to its proximity to Croke Park. The pub itself is a comfortable enough looking setup.

I got in here during, rather than after, a match (as with N0018 The Big Tree) which meant there was still space inside. An army of bar staff were waiting for the hordes to arrive, meaning very quick service at the time - there was probably a staff member for every customer!

The area to the front of the pub had a mobile bar in place - I think only serving Guinness. This is a common enough tack-on for a pub that has a normal local trade and occasional high volumes, also seen recently in S0179 The Gasworks

N0018 The Big Tree

This pub has been harder to get than it ever should have been. These days it only opens for matches or concerts in Croke Park and is generally packed out the door during them - I managed to sneak in during the Monaghan-Tyrone game when it was mostly empty.

A vast premises with a long history - although the claimed foundation date of 1543 is probably spurious by about 200 years - it is unlikely to have long left in its current format.

Planning permission had been received to build student accommodation on the site with a reduced sized bar; but more recently the entire site has been sold to the Dublin Loft Company hotel firm, with the Louis Fitzgerald Group retaining the right to operate the pub until September this year. This is presumably to ensure one last payday from the All Ireland finals. Planning has been applied for the hotel, which will retain a much smaller bar on the corner.

In the early days of Fitzgerald ownership, the Big Tree was one of the main nightlife hotspots in the city, with a noteable gimmick being the installation of phones on every table, allowing you to call other tables. This 'glamour' faded away over time and the pub ceased to operate a normal schedule in about 2010.

The interior is very run down, with the carpets probably the stickiest I've ever experienced. A huge beer garden to the rear has its own bars, portaloos and food trucks to cope with the deluge of fans arriving after the end of a match. It'll be interesting to see how the other local pubs cope with the volume should everything go to current plans.

August 2018 Licence Update

The August licence update has landed early - and there is absolutely nothing of interest in it.

N0057 The Kings Inn

Continuing the trend of recent years, this was a long-closed pub which has reopened in the past few weeks. I had seen people working inside and tap heads illuminated when passing a few months ago, but it took a bit longer to come together fully. The interior looks like it is probably fairly original but everything is clean and refreshed.

A fairly normal, small-ish traditional Dublin pub, on the day of my visit it was busy with tourists staying in the nearby student accommodation for DIT which is rented out during the summer. It is likely to become a popular stop for visitors to the soon-to-open 14 Henrietta Street tenement museum which is just up the road.

There's a relatively limited range of drink options, but it was nice to see the proximity to the brewery being advertised by a handwritten sign on the Porterhouse Red tap. Comparatively cheap US sized pints of Sierra Nevada IPA was what I went for

Closings and (re-)openings January-June 2018

Its time for another bi-annual summary of what pub opening and closings I've noticed in Dublin since the last update in December.

New

Firstly, lets deal with the substantial number of net new licences.

Press Up Group's 1013644 Stella Cinema in Rathmines had re-opened prior to the last update, but its licence number was at that stage un-known. Another addition to their chain now has that status of being open but not yet on the lists - the Lucky Duck on Aungier Street. This had been a pub before but closed over 20 years ago, and was restored from near total dereliction.

In another case of restoration, but this time not a former pub, 1014208 Clontarf Baths has opened as a restaurant with pub licence. The baths were meant to open at the same time, but this almost immediately caused concern relating to planning permission that has still not quite gone away - coverage in recent weeks has been in the Sunday Business Post which is not linkable online.

1013769 9 Below was probably open at the time of the last update, but hadn't hit the licence register and had missed my attention. In the basement of the Hibernian Club, drink has been available on this site for years - but previously only to members of the club. Now anyone with a massively big wallet can do so, which probably hasn't changed the clientele much!

1014216 Iveagh Garden Hotel is a substantial new hotel replacing older offices on Harcourt Street, and 1014271 Dunne and Crescenzi is a long-standing South Frederick Street restuarant presumably branching out in to serving non-eating patrons. This trend was identified in the Morrisseys (now Lisney) annual report as a specific growth sector in the pub trade for Dublin.

And finally, 1013760 Savoy Cinema has re-added a licence after a very prolonged period of not actively holding one. The Savoy receiving its alcohol licence originally in the 1960s was a cause of concern for nearby publicans, but no such reports have appeared this time!

Reopenings

While a smaller number than last time, there were still a fair few closed pubs re-opening.

1013727 Wasabi Bar & Grill has opened in the former WJ Kavanagh premises on Dorset Street, changing from a craft bar to a Brazilian BBQ theme (despite the name implying Japanese food - the same operators have a sushi place down the road).

A few longer closed premises have also reappeared. 1013579 Luckys has opened in what was Bohan's on Meath Street; 1011790 Fourth Corner in the former Nash's on New Street; and N0057 The Kings Inn Bolton Street has reopened in the past few days.

The physical number of closed pubs that are capable of reopening has dwindled so significantly now that this number is likely to stay small for the next while.

Closures

Very few premises have closed since the last report and probably only N0096 Hill Street Sports Bar (formerly Stoneys) has any risk of staying closed for a prolonged period.

N0097 Beer House on Capel Street/Bolton Street has also closed but has already been snapped up to become the next branch of Galway Bay Brewery and is recruiting staff currently. S4583 Residence and S3503 Cafe en Seine are both closed for extensive refits but will reopen.

S1709 The Belgard Inn has closed for demolition and replacement by a Lidl, there were plans for a replacement pub but these are uncertain. S0149 Howl At The Moon has also closed for redevelopment but there should be a replacement pub on-site.

July 2018 licence update

The July licence update has landed quite early, and isn't particularly large

New

1014216 Iveagh Garden Hotel, Harcourt Street

1014271 Dunne and Crescenzi, South Frederick Street - long established restaurant adds a full bar licence. 

Gone

N2260 The Vaults, Amiens Street. This could be temporary but the premises has been closed for years.

Reappeared

S1491 Murrays, Kilmainham after a prolonged absence. I believe it is still closed.

S0116 Ha'penny Bridge Inn

A tourist trap of sorts, this small enough city centre bar does have comedy nights which aren't really the usual thing to try get tourists through the door (trad, trad and more trad being the usual option for nearby pubs)

The pub is named after the unofficial but always used name of the adjacent bridge, referring to the former toll levied on it. The toll was got rid of in 1919. The pub use an image of an Irish halfpenny, first issued in 1928, as their logo, something nobody was ever able to pay for the toll - but I imagine that they didn't want to use the sterling coin from the time with a large image of Britannia!

S1472 Pifko

One of Dublin's two Czech bars, this is a large enough pub with an attached off-licence. It was at one time entirely an off-licence (A Booze2Go, of which I will write about at some stage) but there has been a pub on the site for a very long time. The building currently there is quite new, but the empty site with licence attached was advertised for sale in 1992 after demolition, road widening and site consolidation. There are images of the old pub available in various online archives.

Like many city centre bars, there is an extensive food menu. Unlike many city centre bars, it is quite odd to the Irish pub grub purchasers palate - cabbage soup, lots of pork dishes and so on. Kitchen was closed when I was there, so no chance to try and a DiFontaines slice had to suffice later instead.

S0180 Slatterys

This is an absolutely huge premises, which I didn't realise at the time - I went no further than the main bar and took my pint out to the outdoor area at the front due to the oppressive heat even at 10pm. You can actually tour the pub internally on Google Streetview, possible due to it being so close to Google's European HQ.

One of the regular pre/post match or concert pubs for the Aviva as well as the Docklands business and new housing trade, this pub has always been busy any time I have passed. The front bar - which I thought was the entirety of it - retains a traditional feel even if the rest of the pub is quite modern.

S0179 Grand Canal Hotel / Gasworks

This is one of the two hotels where the bar operation is franchised out to the Galway Bay Brewery - Alfie Byrne's in the Conrad (visited before the blog) is the other. Like any GBB bar outside the city centre, there is a tiny concession to the differing audience - there are Guinness taps.

I think it is probably the largest GBB bar, with multiple different areas in the room. Due to being near to the Aviva Stadium, and on the main route from it to/from the city, it has specific kit-out to deal with large crowds including a second bar (with only Guinness and Althea session IPA taps on it).

Beyond the large size, there are other signs of it being a hotel bar - awkwardly located toilets (downstairs, off in a corner, and with limited signage to tell you which way back to the bar) due to being shared with other functions of the hotel; and multiple TVs. However, it is a vast improvement over the previous bar here - the originator of the Kitty O'Sheas franchise brand of identikit "Irish Bars" across the globe.

S0144 Becky Morgans

A traditional pub in an area that has lost much of its old population base to redevelopment but now has daytime and evening business from tech and finance firms (S0153 The Ferryman nearby been similarly affected). It has managed to keep its charm and feel, however.

During the day on weekdays, you may see the occasional couple in wedding attire pop in for a 'first married pint' due to being the closest pub to the registry office in Patrick Duns

S3603 Maldron Hotel (Pearse Street)

An exceptionally generic hotel bar.

N0089 The Temple

A large inner city pub which has a significant daytime trade from the staff and patients of the hospitals on Eccles Street - including a lunch special which includes a bar of chocolate, an odder choice of desert option but certainly one with low serving costs!

During my visit, I was moved by staff due to a large area having been reserved without notices on the tables - however, there were plenty of other seats so it wasn't like being moved on with nowhere to go.

N0091 Tom Mayes

Another traditional inner city Dublin pub, this one could do with a layout change to let people know it's open.

Situated on a larger corner site, the main bar entrance is to one far extreme with the off-licence entrance (which it seems you can still enter the bar via) is to the other. There is no door on the corner; and the various advertising signs in the windows of the bar are all for the off-licence.

Once you do realise it is actually open and go inside, you're welcomed with a large bar, multiple screens showing sports (horse racing and the World Cup on my visit) and all the usual stuff for a pub of this type. Definitely worth realising that it's not just an off-licence, anyway.

N0067 Delahuntys

Traditional inner city Dublin pub. Relatively small and situated in a fairly densely pubbed area, it has probably the best exterior of any of the pubs nearby - solid wood paneling painted in muted colours - but there isn't a huge amount of difference between them to the outsider.

1013039 Robertas

This is upstairs from my previous 'pub', Dollard & Co. But it has its own full pub licence, and like Dollard, isn't really a pub. It is a restaurant with a large central bar and a very small amount of seating for it.

On a quiet enough early Saturday visit, the only open seating was outdoors - which is split in to a small smoking area and a larger no smoking area. The drinks range is vastly larger than the limited drinks-with-food option offered downstairs and it's a much more conducive atmosphere to stay in for a few, but you'll probably find better elsewhere for just drinks.

1013229 Dollard & Co

This is basically an upmarket supermarket with a sit down deli / cafe - it has a pub licence as this is the easiest way to do the licencing for both off sales and wine with food.

This means you can have some rather expensive pints or wine here, but you are drinking in a (posh) deli. There are plenty of proper bars (most owned by the same company as this, Press Up) nearby to visit instead.

One overpriced pint of Peroni consumed, entry on spreadsheet marked off and off somewhere else...

N2375 Sin É

This pub had escaped me for ages just by not being somewhere I'd pass on foot - so a deliberate trip to get it and close off an area of the city was undertaken.

A music venue and indie late bar, with a primarily craft beer line-up; it is one of the older of its type in Dublin, having been around for quite some time at this stage.

It's a nice pub and the location is actually decent enough for me for a pre-bus pint on the way home so it'll be added to the list of places I use for that.

1006717 Marker Hotel

Due to arriving earlier in the day, I didn't get to go to the famed rooftop bar here, as it hadn't opened yet. There is another bar in the lobby, but it is basically the same as any other hotel lobby going - except for the bar snacks provided for no additional charge, which is a continental touch rarely seen in Ireland.

I'll need to return to see the rooftop bar, before it gets changed by the planned extension to the hotel.

S4345 HQ Gastro Bar

This is more of a restaurant than anything else, and I suspect you were meant to wait to be seated - but as both staff on the reception desk were on the phone and made no attempts to stop me I headed straight to the bar; only noticing the requests to wait to be seated afterwards.

There's a good range of beers on offer but it does really feel like you're slightly in the way if just there for drinks. The premises used to be a branch of Ely and still carries quite a resemblance to the Ely in CHQ internally - just without the 18th Century architecture to match

S4256 Clayton Hotel

This is the Clayton on Cardiff Lane in the South Docklands.

The bar of this hotel is vast, certainly one of the biggest single bars in a hotel in the city. The proximity to the Bord Gais Theatre providing plenty of pre- and post-show custom is probably the biggest driver for this, but also the continually growing number of staff in nearby tech firms probably helps.

Its a fairly generic hotel bar otherwise, and not something worth going out of your way for - but perfectly fine if you're nearby.

S0042 The Windjammer

I'm slightly backlogged with pubs that have been visited but not written up - if I get all 10 posted tonight, it isn't to be seen as one days worth!

This is one of the remaining early houses in the city, but it was mid afternoon before I finished digging in the DCLA on Pearse Street and headed up.

A cheap and traditional city centre pub that was once a tied house for Beamish & Crawford. Was once one of a cluster of pubs at this junction but is now the only remaining open, with the others either demolished or empty shells (Number 24 on this list)

June 2018 licence update

Can't do the full diffs as I don't have the May file with me, but comparing against my master list, there appears to be only one substantive change

New
1014208 Clontarf Baths, Clontarf Road

There is a data change of minor interest otherwise - the licence formerly attached to Baron Johns in Crumlin, which had been used for the Molloys off-licence which was on the ground floor (I would assume effectively the stair well) is now allocated to Dunnes Stores. I would expect this licenced to be sold and transferred as Dunnes already have an off-licence on-site.

1013568 South Boarding Area, Dublin Airport

Identikit setup as in the two bus gate areas - a coffee bar with prepacked sandwiches and bottled beer. This just has its own licence as it is in its own building (Aerodrome licences appear to be issued per operator, per terminal)

N0078 John Kavanagh (The Gravediggers)

I had previously said I thought I'd done all the pubs people expected me to have visited, but I hadn't. This was one. I've identified another but that can wait until I do visit it.

One of the generally identified pubs that retain their Victorian era interiors, after having featured in TV shows and movies and getting an overall name for its authenticity; this pub which is in a residential square and off the beaten track is usually extremely busy. When compared to other pubs which are equivalently hidden away - N1123 Slatts or 1012782 The Hideout this pub may as well be in Temple Bar

However, it isn't. Drink prices reflect its suburban location - change from a fiver is possible for a pint. There's no TV, there's a limited food menu with extremely limited hours and a fairly restricted range of drink; but that is what you go there for.

There's not many pubs in Dublin that are consistently known by an unofficial name, and this is probably the best known. There is some acceptance of the name by the owners, the Kavanagh family who have operated the pub for hundreds of years, but the pub is definitely called John Kavanagh and not The Gravediggers. But nobody will really object to either name.

N0233 The Bald Eagle / Cross Guns

A large, primarily craft beer bar in Phibsboro - this was my original intended target for dinner but was so busy I went to the N2405 The Whitworth instead and called back in a good while later when it had calmed down.

The outside of the premises presents it as two bars - the Bald Eagle and Cross Guns - but they are entirely the one pub inside. There is one main bar, and they use the same doors, toilets and smoking area.

The current setup, and name, is very recent; but the pub itself is quite old - the low and locally sequential licence number show it predates the regional licence numbering system. Most recently it was "Smiths of Phibsboro", a TP Smith Group pub but it has also been Bushes and O'Mahoneys (and possibly other names)

N0236 Brian Boru

Another, and the last for me, of Phibsboro's traditional pubs. There reaches a point where you can't write much more about decent boozers with nice interiors other than basically saying just that - if I'd worked my way North to South rather than South to North it'd have got more text.

Mentioned in Ulysses (admittedly, quite a few pubs are), there have been repeated attempts to redevelop its quite large site, but none have progressed to date.

N2405 The Whitworth

This pub was known as the Porterhouse North for most of its life, and is now "The Whitworth At The Porterhouse", suggesting that the name change may be reversed in future.

Situated in an art deco former car dealership, and incorporating the small former Glasnevin railway station, this is probably the most architecturally interesting pub in Dublin. Drink options are the normal Porterhouse lineup of their own extensive range brewed in Bray and some guest beers; food is pretty decent and the pub is big enough that you will probably find a seat on all but the busiest nights.

As an anecdote, my sister lived on Whitworth Road when this was still a car dealership and the alarm had a habit of going off at 17:01 on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend and running until 09:00 on the Tuesday morning. It was the Friday of a bank holiday weekend when I visited - no alarms to be heard!

N0234 The Hut

Unlike the previous post, this traditional pub in Phibsboro does turn up on the regular lists of surviving Victorian pubs in the city. It doesn't seem much more Victorian than the Bohemian but is recognised as such by others anyway.

Of the 16 pubs recognised for their age and authenticity this is probably the one you're most likely to be able to find a seat in on a busier night - a bit outside the city (the new Luas extension makes it accessible) and entirely off the tourist track

N0232 Bohemian House

A former JG Mooney pub and another of Phibsboros good traditional Dublin pubs. The bar here feels entirely Victorian but doesn't appear on any of the 'standard' lists of remaining Victorian interiors - but the dark wood, partitions and flooring/ceiling all seem to be that old.

Situated in a particularly nice looking terracotta brick building on Doyles Corner, this premises used to actually be operated by the Doyles of N0235 across the road who gave the name to the crossroads

N0209 Clarkes Phibsborough House

This is the first in a series of an evening in Phibsboro(ugh). For a small enough suburb, Phibsboro seems to have the densest collection of traditional pubs in the entire county and this is one of them

Exceptionally quiet - noise wise, there were plenty of customers - this was a slightly strange experience. The other customers were either watching the racing or talking extremely quietly. One TV showed a low-rent UK music station but was muted and the racing was down quite low.

A power cut which affected the entire area occurred while I was in the pub - unfortunately it was the early evening in May as I would have liked to see if the barman tried to light the bar with candles or similar!

May 2018 licence update

The May 2018 licence update appeared yesterday evening. Likely due to how late Aprils was and how early this is in comparison, there are minimal changes and no additions, removals or renumberings.

S4478 Radisson Blu Royal

This is the city centre Radisson, for the avoidance of confusion.

Decent hotel. Look elsewhere to use as a pub - they don't make much of the relatively central location and with new bars opening up nearby at a constant rate I doubt there's much point.

N2588 Ely CHQ

This is extremely similar in setup to Urban Brewing next door, but is the original of the species - Ely has been here since the CHQ building opened and may actually be the only remaining tenant from the days when it was conceived as a high class shopping centre.

The story of CHQ, while not relevant to the pub, is an interesting one. Build as a bonded warehouse it fell derelict when the docks moved further down the river and was later converted to a shopping centre. After a number of years mostly empty, the building is now a mix of food and drink outlets, short term offices and a successful cultural attraction (EPIC). Its a surprisingly similar story to Tobacco Dock in London, except that CHQ has found permanent relevant uses and Tobacco Dock hasn't.

On Ely - this is a fully pub licensed branch of the popular winebar on Ely Place and always seems to do good business when I pass. I had been intending to try it for food but it was extremely busy due to a conference on in the Convention Centre (see the disrupted visit to Urban Brewing linked above also) so I ate elsewhere and dropped back for a drink before my train home. Decent range of craft options from multiple brewers, reasonable prices on premium whiskeys and an interesting enough looking food menu complete the options along with the vast wine choices.