"Hot white walls, black shadows, the aroma of strange Eastern spices" - or so began the text written on the front of the Zanzibar nightclub / cafe bar which formerly occupied the quayside portion of the site of this hotel.
Opened in 1998 with a then groundbreaking (for Dublin) interior, Zanzibar survived until the crash, and then had a short afterlife as a "beach club" nightclub. Dublin's night-time temperatures being absolutely perfect for beach attire, as we all know!
The building then sat derelict for quite some time, before being stripped back to its facade, and a substantial branch of the Locke Living hotel chain built between it and the Lotts behind.
During much of the early stage of construction, the name given for this hotel was to be the Ormond Locke; but either potential confusion with the forever-delayed Ormond Hotel rebuild down the road, or a decision that the Zanzibar name was more interesting lead to opening as the Zanzibar Locke. The hotel opened in December 2020, having only days of public service before the country returned to lockdown, so my visit wasn't really that late after reopening.
The public bar element of it is a stylishly designed, spirit-led bar and restaurant called Baraza. It is relatively low-lit, but not sufficient to cause black shadows; and my whiskey didn't smell particularly Eastern, so it's probably for the best that the old inscription is gone.
A limited selection of beers is offered along with the cocktails and spirits, but its very much more of a post-dinner drink type of place than a hotel-with-a-pub like some other city centre hotels.
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