Don't eat anywhere with pictures of the food on a menu outside the door - advice I give to anyone visiting European tourist centres - Amsterdam in particular. Its not something I'd seen too much in Ireland, until here.
However, it was dinner time and I needed to eat, so I ignored my own advice. The food is fine and the service isn't the oppressive pushy type that usually comes with the picture-book menus abroad. The surroundings are really not my type of pub, so its fairly obvious why this was the last place on Dame Street to get visited.
This premises has changed quite substantially over the past few years. It was heavily promoted as an after-work venue and had a basement nightclub (where the 2014-2016 world record for longest continuous DJ set was achieved); however it now a more traditional hotel bar and seems to be going for the tourist market. The basement is restaurant seating now, with trad and pub rock appearing to be the only live music now offered.
The days of the expensive late bar with pop/commercial dance DJ do seem to have died out; but I'd be of the opinion that there are too many identikit trad-and-stew pubs in the city now. However that does seem to be what tourists are willingly coming here to spend huge amounts of money to experience
The building was derelict for years before it became a hotel. I lived in the apartments behind it in the summer of 1996. From our roof garden it was possible to enter through a back window on the fourth floor and explore the abandoned Victorian offices.
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