N0139 The Ramble Inn

This is a slightly odd pub, spatially. From the outside, its presence - at the end of a row of shops that features an exceptionally long closed but still present chipper - makes you feel like you're somewhere quite rural. And inside, you feel like you're in a branch of The Range - in the furniture and cushion section specifically. 

Its been done up quite recently, and features a *lot* of silver and grey decor and a *lot* of red leather. At that last refurb, the word "Inn" vanished from the name above the door; but this is ignored by basically everywhere that mentions the pub, so it remains the Ramble Inn everywhere.

Other than feeling like I was in Mrs Hinch's living room, my pint was a tad sour like it hadn't been moving (at all) so my overall impression wasn't great. I imagine the decor must appeal to someone, but it could easily put many off.

N0122 The Goblet

Where was I with moaning about that Five Lamps ad? Ah yes, in the Roundabout where they didn't actually sell their very local beer option, that being anything by Hope which were the closest of the set of breweries I measured the distance to.

The Goblet DOES sell some Hope, but still has the same damn ads up. Its actually closer too.

Beer made in Clonmel being represented as local in Artane. Whereas I'm having a pint actually locally made in Howth Junction. Ah Here is right pic.twitter.com/C2u4VqwRoL

— Cian Duffy (@cian_duffy) September 10, 2023

Decent pint of Hop On. Inside of the pub could do with a little bit of a spruce up, but pub seems fine otherwise and was the busiest pub I was in all day. 

N0124 The Roundabout

We've all seen those old signs showing "the price of a pint" over a series of years, and can see that single penny increments were dropped for 5p increments at some time in the 1990s on most of those lists. 

I had now assumed that increments were 10c or maybe even 20c for most places; so I was somewhat surprised to be charged 6.05 for my pint. Of Cobra, as there's a fairly odd tap lineup in the lounge here.

There's also signs up claiming that Five Lamps is the locally brewed beer for the area. At 6.6km crow-flies to the Five Lamps Brewery on Camden Street, it is marginally closer than the 7km to Diageo; but there are two problems with this claim.

The first is that Hope are 3.6km away, with multiple other licenced breweries closer than 6.6km (Porterhouse, Brewdog, Urban, Hopkins & Hopkins and maybe more); so Five Lamps isn't the closest. 

The second is that the Five Lamps Lager being sold there is made in Clonmel. Only low volume products are made on Camden Street. So even without any Hope/Porterhouse/etc products, the Diageo stuff still wins.

But the pub doesn't supply the adverts, and likely doesn't care to vet them - and we'll see that sign again later, more problematically.

The lounge here is quite nice, renovated recently enough I'd imagine. Suburban pubs sometimes don't have a lot to write about, hence the rambling about prices and locations.

N0609 Ardlea Inn

One of the other pub-tickers claims this is "one of Irelands roughest pubs", of which I saw absolutely and utterly nothing to support that claim during my visit. This is not the first time I've found somewhere they claim to be incredibly rough to, well, not be - but this is the one that was the furthest from the case. Different times of day and so on may be different, your pintage may vary. I was also in the lounge, not the bar.

Easy place to get talking to the regulars, as far as I remember a decent pint of Smithwicks for how early in the trading day it was and a comfortable enough suburban pub.  

1020285 The Voyager

Sometimes you end up with a poor impression of a pub very quickly, and the reasons can vary. I initially found the wall of floor staff standing at the far end of the bar here a teeny bit intimidating, but that wasn't the problem here.

The problem here was two English fascists at the bar, discussing their support of specific English fascist figures and their racist views, in a conversation with the barman who was agreeing rather than fucking them out of the pub at the first instant.

I see no reason to return here.

S1523 Frehill Tavern

I think I need a new article tag for when I mention never really liking people standing in the doorway of pubs when I approach. But that isn't my only odd problem with pub doors - I don't like having to open the door (or the outer door) myself. Not in a "I want a doorman" way - the not liking people standing in the way would make that impossible; but in a "this isn't very inviting" way. I'm used to an outer door of a draught lobby being open at the least.

Frehills had the outer door closed, but I went inside anyway. Inside I was treated to cheap-ish Beamish in beer nerd pleasingly ancient glassware (2005 I think) and attentive bar staff. However, I was on a deadline for a bus and needed food, which the chipper next door supplied, so didn't stay for long. 

S1483 The Horse Shoe

This was a rather odd visit to a pub. It was initially odd in that it didn't appear that I was going in to a pub - it is completely buried behind a coffee shop, with a Guinness sign above the only obvious hint of what lies within. 

Additionally, a helpful local confirmed the way in to the pub to me, as apparently people do get lost a lot - albeit more of them are looking for the restaurant upstairs, which has moved from being above the long, long closed S1427 The Hub across the road in recent times.

Inside the pub, I felt as if I'd walked in to a pub somewhere on Merseyside, both from the huge contingent of Liverpool jersey wearing punters and the marginally unusual bar service, particularly when they didn't like the place I'd found to perch (I suspect I was somewhat too large to not be in the way of the bar staff, admittedly). 

The match may have brought in a lot of the custom, but plenty were also there for the daytime karaoke. As well as this being an odder thing itself, my non realisation of it being karaoke just added to it -  I actually assumed the first person taking part was a professional pub singer dressed down (Liverpool kit - not what you'd expect a pub singer to wear) for the occasion; but the second one made me knock my pint and run with an exceptional level of caterwauling.

S1482 The Village Inn

Telling the colleague mentioned in my previous writeup that I had actually gone to the pub they told me not to lead to a lengthy catch-up phone call, which happened after I'd bought a pint here.

I'm not going to take a phone call inside a pub in normal circumstances, and particularly not if its quite busy with people watching sports; so I spent the majority of my visit to The Village Inn in the smoking area out front, leaning on a barrel. So my memory of the interior of the pub is basically non-existant. 

Nice enough outdoor area though.

I do wonder if The Village Inn is the most common pub name in Ireland - with our trend of having a current or former owners name over the door, only a very common surname (and specifically maybe a Tipperary surname, with the odd propensity for Tipp publicans outside of the county) would probably outrank it. I do, sort of, have the data set to try work this out - but pubs are increasingly listed by their limited company name, and while Shancroft Taverns Ltd does also have The Village Inn listed on the register, not every pub has their trading name - or a current trading name when they do.

In Dublin, there are three Village Inns trading - this one, one in Finglas and one in Ballyboughal. There is also a trading Villager in Crumlin; a former Village Inn in Inchicore (T Kinsella - but it was called Village Inn that when I visited it) and also Rathcoole (now Baurnafea House) and Clondalkin (Purty Central). There may be more pubs with Graingers in the name, but as a prefix; and the same applies to Madigans.

S1521 Floods

A former colleague warned me not to go here; albeit it had its previous name (The Four Roads) back then.

I went here.

It was fine. There may have been the tiniest bit of "look at the outsider" going on, but this happens a lot - an abnormally large outsider turning up can raise eyebrows anywhere. That's pretty much all I have to say about the visit to the pub - it was absolutely fine. The suggestions of imminent disaster if I went in were not correct.

One of the older outer suburban pubs, opened in 1938; and sitting on the corner site in a row of the typical red brick shops that 1930s housing estates; this could almost be in England in terms of architechture.

The corner location is the obvious one for a pub, but it is matched by another across the green that is and was never a pub (I believe it was a H Williams supermarket originally). This building confused my "can always tell a pub" senses, but they aren't the most traditional pub buildings in an Irish setting.

The Four Roads of the old name here could almost be counted as five - there are three roads radiating off Sundrive Road rather than a crossroads of two roads creating four directions.

October 2023 Register Update

One addition this month, which I'd never noticed going through planning:

1020014 The Dean Townhouse, Harcourt Street - small but detached extension of 1009296 The Dean Hotel ('review' written for its now defunct basement nightclub) a few doors down

S1520 Stoneboat

There are many pub in Dublin that are heavily bedecked with nautical greebling - but they are usually either right beside the sea (Ringsend, Dun Laoghaire, etc) or just a tad inland in an area that would have housed many dockers in the pre-containerisation days (like N0028 Cusacks on the North Strand)

The Stoneboat is much further away from the sea than any of those; and instead has its nautical items in reference to its name. That name refers to a nearby, ancient (13th Century, though I don't think the current version is anywhere near that old) structure in the River Poddle that diverted water in to pipes towards the city, where it was used for drinking water.

That the name doesn't reference a sea-going boat has not stopped the interior of the pub having wheels, diving suits and every other bit of possible marine decoration you can think of. The pub wasn't always named as such - it has been recorded as the Turks Head in older records.

Beyond the name and the decoration, there is the matter of the pub itself - a perfectly normal inner suburban Dublin pub. Nothing notable occurred while I was to be worthy of comment, as is often the case in suburbia; and with a premises history that is clearly more limited than in older parts of the city, there usually isn't as much to write about. This is a good thing - these pubs target audience is their locals and being perfectly fine to finish reading the papers and have a pint (as this visit consisted of) suggests that you could probably become one of those locals fairly easily.

Ridiculously Late Review: N1994 The Grand Social

I noticed when writing up my September revisited pubs list that I had no page for The Grand Social. Which is odd as I have definitely drunk there during the lifetime of the blog.

Checking my notes on other visits, it would appear to have been March 2017, so this is all of 6.5 years late and I don't remember anything at all about downstairs - I dropped in before going to The Yarn in the Woollen Mills next door. So, erm... I presume it was fine cause I have no strong memories of it at all

My revisit was to the upstairs, accessed from the rear stairs, for an after party after a gig in The Academy. Its a good venue for this sort of thing, being separated from the main bar and capable of having seperate DJs playing.

I had previously attempted to drink here further 13+ years prior to that 2017 visit, having been refused at the door of Pravda, as-was, due to not having ID. That would have qualified it for my occasional RetroReview series, that I haven't updated since pubs reopened after the pandemic, but as I've basically written up the entire Northside it would at least have been written!

Revisited pubs, September 2023

Due to various reasons (gigs and showing someone around D8), this is an exceptionally long revisit list and I might even have missed some:

N0006 Brew Dock, Amiens Street - multiple times this month

N0215 Fidelity, Queen Street - first visit in this incarnation

S3908 The Well, Stephens Green - regular meeting venue

N0084 The Black Sheep, Capel Street - food before going to:

N0097 Underdog, Capel Street - drinks before going to a gig in:

N2256 The Academy, Middle Abbey Street - which had an after party in

N1994 The Grand Social, Liffey Street - I believe I first actually got served here (I was refused when it was Pravda and I was 17) this during the lifetime of the blog and appear to have never written it up...

N0082 McGraths, Drumcondra - frequent visit

S0104 Bull & Castle, Lord Edward Street - work night out that continued to:

S0117 The Lord Edward, Lord Edward Street

S3103 The Christchurch Inn, High Street - showing someone around changes in D8 

1019147 Tailors Hall, High Street - ditto

1016704 Johns Bar, Thomas Street - ditto

N0033 3Arena - the second gig