This site has a long and storied pub history, and there is now a name to match - what was most recently the Grafton Capital Hotel and Break for the Border nightclub has had a full refit/refurb and is just The Grafton - with Bartleys bar.
The "Capital" in the former name was a reference to Capital Bars Plc who, at their peak, had 15 premises in the city and were the Press Up of their day more or less - but this isn't the interesting bit of the history
For on the site prior to the hotel being built was Bartley Dunne's, famed as one of the first gay bars in Dublin, at a time when that was legally dubious prior to decriminalisation in 1993. It wasn't officially a gay bar, as detailed in the Come Here To Me! article linked, and the first official one is probably The Viking - now S0082 Brogans.
So, 29 years after Bartley Dunne's was knocked for the original incarnation of the hotel, the refurbished version opened in 2019 with Bartleys as its new bar, taking up much of the space that Break for the Border did, but without any nightclub function.
Its fairly standard for a hotel bar, and leads through to a more formal sit down restaurant at the rear; but there's a wide enough selection of drinks including Persistence P50 as a smaller Irish firm offering, and the food was good too - however, getting the attention of the floor staff is not easy, and you cannot order at the bar
There were tables available at 7pm on a Friday, which is rare enough and certainly not the case in any of the other nearby pubs so this could be a decent place to start an evening out.
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