Completionism requires me to visit many hotel bars. In this case, I get a grand old hotel with an apparently storied bar - named after a famed guest - but the end result to the drinker is no different to any other non city centre hotel, really.
Dun Laoghaire's current harbour walls began construction in the the late 1810s, and its importance as a secondary harbour to Dublin itself began then; resulting in the growth of the town and the construction of many hotels. The Royal Marine's predecessor dates to 1828 and would have been built for this trade; with the existing hotel dating to 1865. This redevelopment was connected to the second major development of Dun Laoghaire - the railway - which by then had been serving the town for over 30 years.
The 1863-1865 redevelopment was by William Dargan, the railway engineer, and possibly contributed to his financial failure - although he also invested in flax agriculture which ended in failure and certainly didn't help.
Anyway, on to the bar. Hardys is signed from Georges Street, but this entrance was locked and I had to enter via the main entrance, and then find where the bar was - it is not well signed internally.
Its very much set up for food - restaurant tables and so on - but this may be a facet of current COVID restrictions requiring spacing, having table capacity limits and table service only. I was here for lunch anyway, although I was also intending to read the paper and a restaurant table is quite unsuited for this.
The food I ordered was.... fine. Well, edible. Soup was exceptionally bland and the burger, while actually pretty good, did not actually resemble the description on the menu - and neither were particularly cheap. The drinks selection is very generic and fairly poor.
I'd suggest you leave this bar to the hotel residents; there are better bars in Dun Laoghaire even with the constant turnover - in the five and a half years I've been doing this blog, there has always been at least one pub in the town centre closed down!
