"Where to Drink" - 1949 Tourist Guide

I semi-regularly go to the Dublin City Library & Archives to do research on the older era of Dublin pubs I want to eventually cover on the map - internet resources are patchy compared to the entire wall of trade directories they have on show there. While randomly poking at the catalogue one day, it revealed a book called "Where to Drink" from 1949, available only in Dun Laoghaire's new Lexicon library. So I headed out there to take a look. One particular thing of interest was that it had an introduction by Flann O'Brien, who certainly knew where to drink - rather too often at that!

This library has a very significant reference collection all available to look at, locked away behind glass. You need to request every item and it takes quite some time - whereas in the DCLA much of the common material is on open shelving and most other requests are very quick. So I'll still be going to the DCLA unless I need something Dun Laoghaire specific in future. But they were able to get the book for me.

Edited by Tom Merry, then the publisher of the still extant Licensing World magazines, this was a tour guide targetted at those who were now able to travel around Ireland again with ease following the end of World War II - although I believe there was still petrol rationing - particularly tourists coming from the UK where rationing was still more strict. It covers the entire island of Ireland, but has an extra level of detail for Dublin.  I didn't realise Publin had already seen the book in the National Library and has put a few bits up, including tweeting one when I was on the train out to the library; but there's plenty of content to go around...

I've noted down the Dublin pubs listed at the time and will re-visit this posting to explain their current incarnations/link to any writeups over time - there were quite a lot of them!

O'Maras Aston Quay - S0065 Fitzgeralds
O'Maras Bachelors Walk - N1066 Bachelor Inn
O'Looney & Rhatigan, Aungier Street - S0067 JJ Smyth's, temporarily closed
Laurence M Murphy, Baggot Street - S0143 Larry Murphys, closed and unlikely to reopen
John Murrays Waterloo House, Baggot Street - S0172 The Waterloo
Lynn & McGriskin, Bride Street / Golden Lane - "the highest pub ceiling in Dublin"
Nearys, Chatham Street - S0077 Nearys
Thomas Cunniam, Christchurch Place
Patrick Murphy, Cork Street - long closed
Dawson Lounge, 14 Dawson Street - S0010 Dawson Lounge
Davy Byrnes, Duke Street - 1007394 Davy Byrnes
The Pearl, Fleet Street - long closed
Cumann Inn, Kimmage Road Lower  - S1831 KCR House
Hills Roadhouse, Kimmage Road West - S1476 Submarine
John Healys, Lord Edward Street - S0104 Bull & Castle
Nearys, Merrion Road - S0163 Paddy Cullens
Cawleys, Parliament Street - S4530 Turks Head
O'Tooles Patrick Street - demolished 1988
JJ Higgins, Pembroke Street Lower - S0034 Matt the Thresher
Rathgar Lounge, Rathgar Road - S0242 The 108
Monico, Exchequer Street - S0111 The Old Stand

Bergin's Eight Bells, Sir John Rogerson Quay - S0153 The Ferryman

Searsons, Portobello Bridge - S0173 Searsons

Floods, Sundrive Road - S1521 Floods

Rathgar House, Terenure Road - S0243 Comans

Floods of Terenure - S1527 Bradys

Madigans, Thomas Street - long closed

Vincent Smyths 148 Thomas Street - long closed

Lalors, 40 Wexford Street

Irish House, Wood Quay - long closed

Cooneys, 88 Lower Georges Street - 1006999 The Lighthouse

Walters, 68 Upper Georges Street - S0271 Walters, currently closed

Cozy House, 73 Upper Georges Street - S0272 McLoughlins

Punch Bowl, Booterstown - S0298 The Old Punchbowl
Goggins, 99 Monkstown Road - S0301 Goggins
Lamb Doyles, Sandyford - S0252 Lamb Doyles
Dundrum House - S0249 Dundrum House
Golden Ball, Kilternan - 101184 Golden Bowl
Kennedys Old Bawn - S1592 The Old Mill

Templeogue Inn - 1001237 The Morgue

Abbey Bar, Abbey Street - adjacent to the original Abbey Theatre, demolished

Blackhorse Tavern, Blackhorse Avenue - N0240 Hole In The Wall

Dollymount Lounge - demolished

Cat and Cage, Drumcondra Road - N0146 Cat & Cage

Tim Younge, 1 Ellis Quay - latterly The Swallow, long closed

Gaffneys (both) Fairview - N0134 Gaffneys (open) and Gaffneys Snug (closed)

Coles Fairview Bar, Fairview - N0135 Brú House

MJ Lawlor North Frederick Street - N0091 Mayes

Christopher O'Neill, Henry Street - long closed

JJ O'Dwyer, Henry Street - long closed

Egans, Howth Road - N0131 The Beachcomber

Dorans Marlborough Street - long closed
Madigans North Earl Street - N0174 Madigans
Byrnes North Wall Quay - latterly Galligans, demolished
O'Connors North Wall Quay - latter Vallence & McGrath, to reopen as the bar of The Mayson Hotel in 2020
Patrick Conway Parnell Street - N1097 Conways, long closed but extant and licenced
Eamonn Cooney, Phibsboro Road - N0208 McGowans
Davys Boro Bar, Phisboro Road - N0209 Clarkes Phibsborough House
Bushes Cross Guns, Phibsboro Road - N0233 The Bald Eagle
Hardys The Hut, Phisbsboro Road - N0234 The Hut
Doyles Corner - N0235 Doyles Corner
Hedigans Brian Boru Prospect Avenue - N0236 Hedigans Brian Boru
PT McGlynn, Stoneybatter - N0223 Tommy O'Garas
Rainbow Bar, Talbot Street - N2081 Ripley Court Hotel
O'Neills Talbot Street - N0053 Graingers
Boot Inn, "Ballymun"! - N0247 Boot Inn
Taylors Star Bar, Swords - N0302 The Star
JF Donnelly, Blanchardstown - nearby N2354 The 12th Lock Hotel
Bertie Donnelly, Mulhuddart
Manhattan, Raheny - N0171 The Manhattan
Waterside, Howth - N0162 The Waterside
Joe May, Skerries - DG0500 - Joe Mays
McGowans Gladstone, Balbriggan - DG0492 The Gladstone Inn

These three pubs only had a display ad within the book rather than a review:

Palace Bar, Fleet Street - S0086 The Palace
Big Tree Swords - N0305 The Estuary
Central Bar Swords - N0301 The Betsy

1015426 Rubys

This is one of my regular lunch spots, being very close to my office. Primarily a restaurant, it does all the regular table service fast food products - except beef burgers. There's an Eddie Rockets next door, probably not worth selling the same products - so pizza, chicken burgers and steaks make up the bulk of the menu. They have a branch in Swords also, but this is not licenced as a pub.

They do however have a bar, and even have outdoor taps for busy events in the 3Arena next door; so I had assumed it must have had a pub licence all along - the Revenue list does not always reflect every potential licence holder; and then finally it appeared in the June 2019 listing. This is the second retrospective visit I've had to record, after 1013222 Hudson Rooms upgraded from a restaurant licence to a pub licence - although I'll inevitably have another pint in Rubys shortly.

I imagine the licence came from the now closed and demolished 1001897 Bunker which was under the public area outside which now has the Exo Building under construction on it. This was in the foundations of the otherwise unbuilt Watchtower Building

The foods good, its fairly cheap and the lunch loyalty card they do has a very quick payback. This is reflected in its popularity - it can be very difficult to get a seat here for Friday lunch, particularly on the last Friday of the month; and nigh on impossible on gig nights

S1470 Agnes Brownes

The name. The history. The music. This pub gives it all

It can't be much of a jump to assume that the pub is named after the fictional character, presumably - from the spelling -  the much more acceptable books-and-movie version vaguely based on Brendan O'Carroll's mother (a Labour Party TD!) and depicted by Anjelica Huston; rather than the modern version depicted by O'Carroll in drag. But its probably closer to the latter.

This pub has a very interesting recent history, with more name changes than basically anywhere else, and that's only the ones I've tracked. In its various incarnations - all relatively recent - it was a Booze2Go off-licence; it was the example of a working class pub in a piece on their decline, and it was a rather rough gay bar called the Wig & Pen, which had men-only nights "enforced" by a €50 entry fee for women. I now can't find the account of it online, but a number of women decided to pay in one night with interesting results!

The current incarnation is very similar to the one described when it was The Hilltop in 2013. But the notable thing on the night I visited was the music. Early 2000s commercial/chart trance music made up the majority of it - it was just like listening to Ivan Boreland on Highland Radio when I was 15 again.

The pub is almost comically rough, but seemed safe enough the night I was there, which was a Saturday at that.

"Professional Pubs" - 1972 and now

A few weeks ago, Emma from the excellent Dublin Ghost Signs shared some content on Twitter from a 1972 tourist guide to Dublin, commenting on the particularly cutting description of the pub stock at the time - bad pubs being "the majority" and others being "overpriced and impersonal, with synthetic decor". The last bit can still describe quite a few places!

The mention of a 24 hour pub crawl piqued my interest, and a photo of this page of the book was provided. As expected, it involves cheating by drinking overnight in the residents bar of your hotel. I requested some pictures of the other pages of the book, which were then provided by DM.

The content is relatively predictable if you've read any other pub guides from the time - bar that 24 hour "pub" crawl - and one other section I've never seen anywhere else do. There is a short section on "Professional Pubs", and rather than being a list of allegedly better-run pubs, as you might expect from the cutting tone elsewhere, it is actually a list of where those in certain professions were more likely to drink at the time. Notably they don't cover the majority of trades, which did have regular pubs at the time - dock workers, market traders, Guinness staff and so on.

We start with the fairly well known combo of the Pearl on Fleet Street and the Silver Swan on Burgh Quay as the Journalists haunt. Both of these are closed. They then list the Montrose Hotel (closed) and S0165 Merrion Inn as where TV staff drink; and The Plough on Abbey Street (closed) and 1008645 Molloys on Talbot Street as where actors drink. Presumably not TV actors, as those two TV pubs were the only ones anywhere near the RTE studios really!

Apparently, those actors and their "camp followers" - what precisely they mean by this is debatable, but as they point out where there is a drag show elsewhere, you can probably guess - all later end up in Groomes, now N1888 Cassidys Hotel on Cavendish Row; where they drink the night away with Fianna Failers!

The author now batters through some quicker entries:
Horseracing industry - S0111 Old Stand
"young sports-carred executives" - Wicklow Hotel, closed, roughly where S3271 Marys is now
Poets and Writers - S0093 McDaids and Sinnotts, the original one not the current one
Irish speakers (not a profession...) - Sinnotts again
Barristers & legal staff - N0355 Four Courts own bar (closed) and the Four Courts Hotel (closed)
Ad execs - The Pembroke, now N0034 Matt the Thresher
Gravediggers - oh come on, you can guess this one

As you can see, quite a lot of these have closed down, or are massively changed. None of them really have the same status anymore - but there are a few pubs which do still get some level of professional clustering that I can see. Like some of the 70s ones, these are usually down to location more than anything else.

N2390 Lagoona and N1833 Harbourmaster get significant numbers of finance industry staff in them, particularly in the evening; and N2168 Blockburger HQ gets primarily tech workers - as it is inside a gated business campus, there are very very few external customers to dilute the trade. There's bound to be some others I'm not aware of also.

S1464 Pimlico Tavern

The mononymic street of Pimlico is an odd mix of squat two story buildings, with comparatively very tall 3 story former commercial structures at the end of blocks and 1960s Dublin Corporation flat blocks.

Sitting slightly incongrously in the middle of them is a mid 1990s 4 story building of modern apartments with a large pub on the ground floor. This replaced the previous Pimlico Tavern at the same address. A 1997 planning application to add the oddly mismatched top floor to part of the block mentions converting the first floor from a lounge to further apartments; so if this was fitted out originally the pub would have been vast.

Publin mentions the pub reopening in 2008, so presumably it had closed in the intervening period, but much of the decor likely dates to the mid 1990s still. The prices are closer to the early 2000s, with a pint available for €3.85 when I visited - if you'll drink Beamish.

Its a bit out of the way and feels very much a locals pub compared to some pubs in the Liberties these days, but that isn't a negative in anyway.

S1441 The Lamplighter

Back in December I visited the just reopened N0207 Dillons, which was being operated by a barman from The Lamplighter. The same owners had taken on the long-closed pub (formerly Liam Walshs), and after the refit and opening there, moved staff over to do similar works here. I got chatting to the barman and promised to visit The Lamplighter when it reopened - I had to visit it eventually anyway.

When I visited, the internal refit of was complete, but the external work was still underway. Larger windows had been installed (reinstated, I think) including opening some on the completely blanked off side that's visible on Google Maps and made the pub significantly more welcoming from outside - something also done nearby to S1456 The Lark Inn on Meath Street recently enough.

Its a larger pub than Dillons, so there was more than one working behind the bar - and shortly after ordering, the barman I'd met in Dillons appeared, and recognised me immediately. My advanced height does make it a bit easier to pick me out in a crowd; but it had been a few months since the only time I'd seen him before, so he does have impressive powers of recall

The pub is fitted out to a nice standard in a traditional style. Apparently a multi-level outdoor area was under construction still - I'd imagine this should be open now and should be a nice suntrap on the few suitable days.

S1440 Shanahan's

Relatively recently sold, I don't know how long this pub will resemble what it did on the evening of my visit - a small, very traditional inner city pub.

There's enough wood in here to make you think you're on a boat - actually, I've said that about somewhere else before, I really need to think of some more analogies.

This is another of the pubs I forgot to write up at the time and the passage of time means I don't actually remember that much about it... I think the pints were quite cheap, but there was another pub later that evening that was astoundingly cheap which we'll get to in time; and this area of the city is generally reasonable anyway.

1008283 Fallons

This very traditional Liberties bar of wide repute is claimed to date to the early 17th century or earlier - and with the Viking finds on the site of the hotel that is being built next door, you could imagine there may have been a tavern near here for a millennium. The building itself, or at least its external walls, is likely late 18th or early 19th century however.

This isn't a very large pub, and competition for the snug is immense. I got a seat at the bar when I visited, and decided to go for a Guinness - not my regular pint, but sometimes the surroundings guide me towards it - N0078 Kavanaghs/Gravediggers being somewhere else it happened.

This was the first pub where I dabbled in Instagram; forgetting to even say where the photo was taken or do any hashtags. That might be why I've still got single figure followers; but also makes it even stranger that I forgot to do the writeups for this trip for many months.

S0104 Bull and Castle

This visit was in February - I somehow forgot this ever happened and ended up writing up some pubs from the same weekend; completely skipping this trip.

This is one of the FX Buckley chain of steakhouses; and one of them with a full pub licence, similar to N0205 Ryans on Parkgate Street. I pass it a lot, but always got the impression that you really needed to be sitting down to eat to go in - until walking past on a specific mission to head somewhere else (the next pub) when I noticed signage stating that there was a bar open upstairs

Up the staircase I go - accessible from a door to the side of the main downstairs bar - and find myself in a room where quite a few people are eating; but there are tables and bar seats freely available to have drinks.

Had I written this up in mid-February, I could probably have told you more about the drinks options and so on - but they're lost to time now. Nothing negative stood out anyway!

S0193 Birchalls

It was unfeasibly hot and also rather oddly crowded in Birchalls when I visited, so I only stayed for one. It wasn't a particularly warm night, but some of the clientele were even in shorts, so it may always be quite that hot.

Sitting on a corner site, facing McSorleys the other side of the road, this pub could be dropped in to the south city centre without looking out of place amongst the other traditional pubs there, with partitions and leatherette banquette seating; dark wood and plenty of shades of brown to the decor. 

Pints are the usual macro range and a few of the bigger Irish craft or sort-of-craft (Franciscan Well) products, and they do toasties. I almost necked my pint to get out to somewhere less warm, so didn't really get to sample the atmosphere much.

S0057 JP Mooneys / Kildare Street Hotel

JP Mooneys? I thought they went bust in the 70s? Or is this name confusingly similar to JG Mooney?

Well, its the latter, and to be honest old pub nerds or those over about 50 are likely to have heard of them. And its not the only confusing thing here, as I was convinced this hotel bar wouldn't reopen - the new operators The Key Collection have a few hotels with no public bar; and it was closed for quite some time.

Once the Blarney Inn tourist-tack-pit and Club Nassau over-30s-fleshpit, they have done quite a decent job upgrading the pub here to a quite standard city centre premises. Its identikit to plenty of other pubs, but its a major improvement over what went before. There's a fairly decent drinks selection both on draught and spirits; its not too noisy and it wasn't too crowded. Its just a little away from the main busy sections - but not that far away - and a good alternative if those are busy.

S0188 McSorley's

McSorleys was a lot cooler (temperature wise) than Birchalls across the road - and I also got a table that had just been vacated.

There's a younger crowd in here, at least in the parts of the U-shaped premises further away (as you go in) from the corner entrance. The pub wraps back around on itself to the second entrance a few metres away from the first, which featured a doorman by the time I was leaving and is presumably where the late bar part of the pub primarily operates from

Said corner entrance features quite a nice entrance way, with a ghost sign from when a chemists operated from here. This brings you in to the most traditional part of the bar, with a large whiskey selection on display behind the bar. The drinks options are quite varied for suburbia - although nothing compared to what you can get at the other end of the village in S0190 Taphouse

Because of the more clement temperature and having a table, I spent longer here than I often would - and eventually decided to leave when someone sat nearby muttering to themselves and trying to make the floor staff take flyers and pamphlets off them. I imagine harmless, but I didn't want to have to decline whatever the flyer was for!

June 2019 licence update

Relatively minor update this month, just two new premises - one of which I've visited before.

New licences

1015221 - Aloft Hotel Blackpitts. This has subsumed the old Tenters pub building which closed in the early 2000s.

1015426 Rubys Point Village - this has been open for a few years and effectively trading as a pub the entire time. Would not be surprised if this is the licence formerly attached to Harrys Bar/Carbon/Bunker which was just outside the door here. Have visited many times and will do a fill-in post for it soon.

S0836 Hampton Hotel

Famed, in its past life as Sachs Hotel, for its basement nightclub with... how can I put this politely? "a reputation for being suitable to meet a potential partner of an older age bracket", this was somewhere I wasn't sure when I'd visit as I had little desire to see that! Unsurprisingly, there's an awful boom-time Barry Egan celeb piece covering the hotel in the 70s and explaining the name.

However, it was renamed some time ago and a recent refit to the Hampton has removed the nightclub; but still leaves a bar which opens directly to the outside world and without much feeling of being in a hotel, and more like a suburban pub - modern but not attempting to be cool.

Its fine really. Donnybrook has other places to drink - although when O'Connells and Kielys closed within a short time of each other and with McCloskeys due to close at some point, it did look like this could be the only place to drink at this end of the village. Its the wrong end of the village to get the brunt of the traffic from the remaining games at "Energia Park", although there's sufficient space inside and out for quite a lot of people.

S0212 McCloskeys

This pub is under looming threat of closure for redevelopment, and indeed there were suggestions online last year that it *had* closed. These may have been people getting confused with Kielys down the road, which has closed for redevelopment; or O'Connells a bit closer, which also closed temporarily.

So it's open - for now; and the most recent planning application was refused.

A very traditional, and relatively large suburban pub, you can get a pint cheaper here than anywhere else nearby - a fiver flat for Smithwicks as far as I can remember. There seems to be an emphasis on personal service, from bar staff who know the majority of the customers personally.

A 2008 Irishman's Diary piece in the Irish Times discussed the change which had occurred in Donnybrook, mentioning McCloskeys as one of the only places mostly unchanged. The details of the pubs from then hold little resemblance to now - Kielys closed, Madigans renamed, Longs renamed (and both further refurbished), with the exception of McCloskeys remaining much the same. It may not last, depending on whether planning can be obtained, which could leave Lyk-Nu dry cleaners the only entry from that article standing!

S0211 Arthur Maynes

The Dublin outpost of a Cork bar chain that also runs Rising Sons Brewery, this pub is presented as if it is a converted pharmacy, filled with old medicine bottles and camera equipment.

It isn't - but the name is taken from one of their Cork pubs which was, and the various bits and pieces are apparently from there. As the Cork branch is still fully decorated I'm not sure how it managed to give up this much material, but those who care to look at them will see that many of the bottles are from Irish pharmaceutical companies of the past; so the chances that they're an eBay load from elsewhere is quite slim!

There are 7 Rising Sons taps - 6 standard and a rotational - as well as a selection of the regular macros, with cocktails and food finishing off what's available

The front bar/lounge - it has a bar, but for seating not service I think - is particularly nice to sit in, with sun coming in through the wall of bottles and some comfortable antique chairs. This is somewhere I would have preferred to stay a bit longer in, but I had somewhere to be - which ended up being delayed sufficiently to get another pint somewhere else, as it happens.

N2659 Vue Cinema

Its a cinema. It sells Heineken, Bulmers and snipes of wine. This sounds extremely familiar doesn't it?

There are cinemas with proper bars - that linked post mentions some, and also mentions that this one wasn't selling alcohol at the time; but they have now added it. Previously they did the odd champagne screening of a movie; usually on a midweek morning and with an >50s age recommendation, which I had arbritarily decided not to count as a pub.

One oddity was that their till system is unable to proceed without the entry of a date of birth; so ID was requested from me for the first time in quite a few years.

N1122 Deadmans Inn

Somewhat by accident, I ended up doing three old roadhouses in a row. This one sits down on the Old Dublin Road, which is now basically a driveway to the Kings Hospital school; and a world away from the heavy traffic through Leixlip village or the six-lane dual carriageway which sits on an enbankment right behind the pub.

There isn't a large drinks trade around here - there being a limited number of houses nearby - and the pub is primarily a food venue now, with a very basic drinks range offered. It was dinner time, so food was eaten and was of a decent standard.

The back of the food menus gives an apparent story for the name of the pub, which I now regret not photographing as it is not on their website nor is it the "accepted" reason for the name.

The claimed reason was something along the lines of a harsh masters injured coachman dying on the side of the road near the Inn, leading to the name. The "accepted" reason that I had always been told, and is repeated everywhere else, is that the pub was used for inquests for those who had died on the roads, which is also the received wisdom about why 1001237 Templeogue Inn is rarely if ever called that, with The Morgue being the more common name.

Something else I regret not getting a photo of, assuming there'd be some online, was the rather strange waxwork sort-of in the wall above the stairs. Its so completely out of place with the rest of the pub that I'd love to know why its there.

N1129 Ball Alley House

I've passed this pub a few thousand times on the 66 bus, which stops outside in both directions, but had never got off one to head in before. Quite an old premises, this would have been a roadhouse on the N4 but now serves a more mature area of Lucan.

The bar was very busy when I dropped in on a weekday afternoon, but I was probably half the age of the next youngest punter. Now, I'm not particularly young - you may see references to pubs that closed in the mid 00s that I visited legally - so the average age in here was very high.

There's a lounge out the back, though, which gets a much younger crowd in the evenings/weekends, so this pub isn't at any immediate risk of demographics leaving it without an audience.

There's nothing wrong with the Ball Alley, but the pubs in the village have a more interesting atmosphere and only a tiny bit further from the bus for me. So there probably won't be a re-visit.

1011787 Salmon Leap

This pub is in Dublin. Just. And Revenue think its in Kildare!

Sitting on a bend in the road just after you cross the Liffey, and hence the county boundary, leaving Leixlip village, the Salmon Leap could pass for a rural roadhouse if looked at in isolation. However, as it sits on the old N4, usually clogged with traffic; and in the shadow of the main drinking water treatment plant for much of the Northside, the idyll you may have constructed in your mind is quickly shattered.

That doesn't mean its not a nice pub, though. There's multiple sections to it, including a fairly small bar and a sort-of-snug-with-windows that is decorated with local sporting memorabilia. That local happens to include a few International grade players has helped, as there are Trevor Brennan and Emma Byrne shirts and so on up on the walls and ceiling.

This is the nearest of the Dublin pubs to my house, however I'd never actually been to it before. I've never really gone drinking in Leixlip - Maynooth and occasionally Celbridge being my normal places before, so I had only been the hotels for various events (two of those hotels are also in Dublin, as it happens).

Additionally, the pub was closed for quite some time. It shut in 2011 due to the prevailing economic conditions at the time, and was then significantly damaged in a serial arson attack in 2012 before reopening, fully restored, a few years ago. Its easily accessible from Dublin the 66 bus, and is relatively cheap for a Dublin pub, so is worth the visit.

S0213 The Donnybrook Gastropub

On my map, this briefly had a name that would have doomed it to a short opening season - "Decemberfest Beer Lodge". But this was a pop-up occupancy, after the closure of the famed O'Connells Restaurant and the reopening as the Donnybrook.

O'Connells did run the premises primarily as a restaurant - and the new operators do much the same. O'Connells moved from the restaurant in what is now the Clayton in Ballsbridge, taking quite a high reputation with them, in to what was then a branch of the Madigans pub chain. You could go for drinks alone but you'd be rather out of place.

The new operator is Oliver Dunne, who notably deliberately gave up a Michelin star at his primary premises in Malahide, and also brings a strong reputation with him. He ran O'Connells briefly in 2018 before closing it, and presumably had little to do with the Beer Lodge!

There's somewhat more of a bar here now than before; and on entering you are directed to stop and wait for a table or walk through for drinks, and they advertise sports on TV. We stopped and waited, and had a quite decent and also quite reasonably priced meal - the second price surprise in Donnybrook of the day after the cheap pints in McCloskeys.

When O'Connells closed, I wasn't sure if Dunne had dropped his plans for it, and actually assumed he had with the temporary Christmas operation. It's quite a positive outcome that one high-end food-centric pub was replaced with another relatively quickly.

N0312 Coachmans Inn

This roadside pub near Dublin Airport is now generally referred to as "Coachmans Inn Restaurant" by its owners, as the carvery has taken over most of the site, and with only a very limited number of nearby houses, there isn't a significant amount of local trade anymore. Some nearby houses were bought by the DAA to reduce noise complaints during the T2 planning application and I suspect more may have gone for the same reason for the second runway; and I'd imagine that drink driving enforcement will have had an impact over time too.

I was working in the area and had time for a long lunch, so popped in to avoid having to make a specific trip at some future point. I wasn't expecting the scale of the food operations to be quite so big, but there is still a small, extremely traditional bar tucked away at the front. The usual range of taps, typical pub decor and a barman in a shirt and tie could put this as the entirety of a small pub in a country village.

The food was passable - its carvery, which I'm no fan of, and I'm having to eat a lot on this mission -  so I had the only different item which was sweet and sour pork with rice - and mash, roast potatoes, full carvery veg range etc if you so wished! I decided to Instagram the meal, because that's what you do isn't it? Except usually its something that looks more appetising, and with more effort made to make the photo not be crap.

1014503 Hotel 7

The newest of the multiple hotels along here, Hotel 7 is quite small and the bar/restaurant is of a similar scale. The reception desk is actually in the bar, presumably due to there being nowhere else to put it!

Fitted out to a high standard, this hotel is operated by Dalata and branded as a "Maldron Group" hotel, presumably due to being 3* like the fully branded Maldrons - but as the Irish star ratings are based on facilities alone, I wouldn't compare it to an older/larger 3* property.

I actually did need to eat dinner at this stage, so I didn't need to ask if drinks only was an option here. However, with only Guinness and Smithwicks on tap and a small range of long-standing Irish craft bottles (Blacks, O'Haras) there isn't much to pick from anyway. The food was decent, the environment nice but unless you are eating there probably isn't much point to go here; and I would never have bothered except for my specific purpose.

1001118 Belvedere Hotel

Great Denmark Street continues on from Gardiner Row, just off the top of Parnell Square, and in a relatively short stretch along the two streets there are no fewer than four hotels - well, you could say four and a half, as The Castle Hotel has merged through the buildings to Waltons Hotel on North Frederick Street.

The wider area has some of Dublins cheaper hotels, but The Belvedere was at the higher end, and the highest on the street until the addition of Hotel 7 across the road recently (and more on it soon). From the outside, there is a substantial section which is clearly a bar/pub, and also nearly always clearly closed - but this is not the hotel bar, it is the dinner-and-a-show Irish dancing and music night which seems to run at least weekly year-round. 

I believe this may have been a nightclub in the semi-recent past, but the noise levels from these are putting hotels off offering them, along with the reducing spend due to pre-drinking. The Irish dance shows are usually over much earlier and have a hefty ticket price. They are an increasingly popular part of the tourist sector in Dublin with bars in - and out of - the city offering it, ranging from Riverdance-lite events down to full on fright wigs and nearly luminous dresses. The photos here place it towards the classier end of the scale at least. 

The hotel bar is instead two cosy rooms off to the other side of the lobby, featuring a small serving area with a relatively limited range of drinks and a very traditional pubgrub menu. Its was even quieter, noise-wise, than the Academy previously so could be perfect for finding somewhere for a quiet pint and chat on a weekend evening - once you are bringing the person to chat with along with you!

N2007 Academy Plaza Hotel

There's plenty of hotels in Dublin that have a Publicans Ordinary (Hotel) licence where I'm not actually sure if I can walk in off the street to get a drink. For some of them I'm absolutely sure I can't, and others where I keep intending to phone in advance before I toddle off a potentially pointless bus trip with no other options nearby - Parkwest, Tyrrellstown, Clonshaugh all come to mind here

However, the Academy Plaza just off the top of O'Connell Street is one of the ones where I was fairly certain you could - and you can. However, I was still greeted by the reception desk as soon as I walked in, something which I'm always expecting to lead to a "no, the bar is residents-only" reply.

The bar is a pretty standard hotel lobby bar, serving fairly standard bar food and macro beers with a suited barman, and a crowd mostly made up of hotel residents. There are other bars nearby - particularly the Living Room/Murrays/Fibbers complex with its three licences surrounding one large enclosed outdoor area - that are probably more conducive to head out for pints in; but if you want relative quiet this would be perfect.