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.