Friday 26 April 2024
1002618 Taylors Three Rock
Wednesday 24 April 2024
S0369 Step Inn
What were we thinking, doing a drive (I was not the driver, the driver was not drinking) around the pubs of a stereotypically wealthier part of South Dublin during a rugby match?
It wasn't easy to get in to the Step Inn - its carpark was rammed, and from the carpark it isn't obvious how to actually walk in to the pub - and it wasn't easy to get a seat either; or get an order in at the bar for that matter - however, once sat, there was sufficient floor service that this wasn't a real issue.
Despite the Step Inn being incredibly busy, Stepaside doesn't seem to quite have the numbers to support two pubs - the second one (Morgan and Macs, Fern & Co, Wild Boar at various times) across the road is currently closed; and remains unticked (and untickable) as I'm not entirely confident that I did actually visit there for lunch when kitting out the medical centre in a previous job. The area has grown significantly, and continues to grow, but changing patterns in pub attendance may be cancelling this out.
The pub it does have is a decent suburban pub regardless, assuming you can get in.
Monday 22 April 2024
1001184 Farmer Browns Kilternan
As I usually don't get to write a pub up immediately, there is always a risk that something significant will happen before I get to do the writeup. And in this case, the pub has closed down.
The Golden Ball pub, as was, was bought by Greg Kavanagh for the land around it; and with this redeveloped - looking nothing like the original proposal - he sold it on in November 2023. During his ownership, the pub was leased out to the restaurant-and-occasional-pub chain Farmer Browns, and I visited during the latter days of their operation.
This pub was the 750th on a rolling register basis, albeit I've visited two other new pubs that are not yet on the register before this, so it is only 750th by default really.
Under the Farmer Browns operation, there was a restaurant area and a bar area, with my visit being constrained to the bar as I'd already had lunch; but this may not be the same once the new owners take over.
Saturday 20 April 2024
(no number yet) Krewe South
This post may end up being pointless for ticking purposes; as I don't yet know if this is going to have a pub licence; but as its sister premises (N2805 Krewe North - since visited but not written up yet) has a pub licence, and this one has a similar setup, I'm assuming it does.
By not being on the register, it has been robbed of being Pub #750 on a rolling register basis - it can't be marked as such, as its not there to mark. But maybe it isn't even a pub anyway.
From the off, things didn't look good here. Their booking system told me there were no seats available for a single diner; possibly ever - but when I looked for a table for two, I was offered any and every 15 minute slot I wanted that evening. I didn't book one lest I had to make up a story about a missing date; but just turned up in person.
As expected, there were plenty of seats available. The next issue is that the tap list here is bloody awful.
However, the food is the main draw here; and is fantastic - this is going to be subjective, but they manage to hit exactly what I want, taste wise.
Fix the booking system and get one, just one, Irish independent product on the taps and I'll give it 5/5 every day.
Something I noticed on my visits to the toilets - the food is quite messy, and that's where the sinks are - was that the music playout appeared to be stuck there, with a single track repeating. This is apparently deliberate.
Friday 19 April 2024
S0971 Leopardstown Inn
The rotating bar is gone.
I only came here for the rotating bar (and to tick it off the list). Bah.
My main takeaway from the now entirely stationary pub is that its a lot, lot smaller than I imagined. The extensive radio advertising (for the rotating bar) made me assume this was an absolutely massive complex. Its not small, but its probably half the size I'd assumed in my mind.
My static pint was fine, but I wanted to get marginally dizzy.
Wednesday 17 April 2024
S0397 Byrnes of Galloping Green
Monday 15 April 2024
S0400 Stillorgan Orchard
Saturday 13 April 2024
S0401 Bolands
After one totally normal, and one totally normal but soggy, pub in this general area I was expecting a third (and a fourth, etc etc). But that I did not get.
Bolands is quite a large pub, and yet despite its size, is completely decorated inside with music, movie and comic book content/memorabilia. From 7" singles on the ceiling to movie posters on the walls, there isn't really an inch left without some form of pop culture decoration. It's certainly a change from the oil cans and anvils greebling that many other pubs have.
The pub wasn't massively busy for the time of day, and particularly compared to the Millhouse; but we'll see that trend a bit further in the next pub. The area may be slightly over-provided with pubs; even with the complicated restaurant-bar-then-nightclub of Blakes / Burn / whatever you remember it as across the road being a cleared site now
The pub has been up for sale a few times in recent years - 2017 and 2022 - but I'm not sure if it has actually changed hands.
Friday 12 April 2024
1013865 The Millhouse
Have you ever wanted to experience a hybrid of a sauna and a pub? Because you can in Stillorgan.
Walking along the outside of this pub, I noticed that all the windows were covered in condensation inside; and on entering the premises I was hit by a wall of wet - I am not used to having steamed up glasses on a dry day; but I got them here.
This appears to be a side effect of the kitchens here; but every other pub that does food manages to not sweat out the customers in the process
I'm sure the pub is nice enough to sit in when its *not* serving food; but I was happy to knock my pint and get out in to the cool February air outside to dry off.
Thursday 11 April 2024
Revisited Pubs March 2024
Only some absolute regulars this month:
N0006 Brew Dock - waiting for a train and needing dinner
N0053 Graingers - waiting for a train without needing dinner
Wednesday 10 April 2024
S0254 O'Dwyers
On a bus trip some weeks after visiting O'Dwyers, I saw a promotional banner for a printers stating something along the lines of "a business with no sign as a sign of no business". And indeed, O'Dwyers has basically no signs for itself, being externally swamped by signs for Scotts - the restaurant upstairs from it. But it still exists.
Inside has a bit of a sign overload also, which placards on every table and at multiple locations behind the bar flagging the presence of allergen info for customers. This type of strong notification can come from a negative event; which I really hope is not the case here. Having a non-anaphylactic peanut allergy, I do occasionally check the allergen info folders when eating and I do want to know that they are there - but they legally have to be these days.
Once you can find your way through the sea of signs, there's a decent pub underneath them all.
Monday 8 April 2024
S1487 The Waterside
Saturday 6 April 2024
S2026 The Steering Wheel
I actually tried this pub between the Laurels and the Central, but couldn't find a seat or a space to wedge myself in - this being the busiest, at least in terms of space, of the lot. A smaller room, downstairs anyway, than any of the others; this felt more like a traditional Dublin pub than a suburban pub.
Some of this may be down to the fact that it, well, was. This is a rare case of a pub that moved - The Steering Wheel was on Bolton Street, but (at least) the name moved out to Clondalkin in the early 80s.
Why it moved has one obvious reasons; and some possibly other ones. The Bolton Street pub went on fire on May 8th and May 14th, 1979 and was seriously damaged - but it did reopen for a brief period as the Judge and Jury in the 1980s.
Also in 1979, The Stores pub in Clondalkin was demolished as part of a retail redevelopment that includes the premises currently occupied by the Steering Wheel - going on the location of the remaining buildings in that photo, it was slightly further East than where the pub currently sits. The new pub opened as The Steering Wheel in the early 80s.
I don't know for sure that this was anything other than a case of borrowing the name of a known pub; but there's good reason to have taken a city centre pub out to suburbia. As road widening and redevelopment ate up much of the original structure of the North city centre in the 70s, and Clondalkin grew as a new suburb, a reasonable proportion of the old regulars will have moved out of the city, and probably a decent percentage to within range of Clondalkin Village. This would also apply to just appropriating a name, though.
The licencing application to move The Stores licence to the new premises was made by the then operating company of The Central - I should probably figure out if they owned the Bolton Street pub to tie down whether it is a "move" or just an identical name.
Assuming the bar is similar now to what it was then - it is quite traditional - what they may have got is a nice bar, with traditionally shirt-and-tie'd barmen and a decent crowd of what seem to be regulars. I didn't go upstairs, to the more modern section of the bar - which has changed names a few times recently, having been Gunpowder and now the Tree Top, but it appears to be well reviewed.
Thursday 4 April 2024
April 2024 Register Update
Hotels all the way down in a slim enough update:
New:
1020358 Chancery Hotel, Ship Street - new hotel
Renumbered:
1021019 The Marker Hotel, Grand Canal Dock - formerly 1006717
Re-appeared:
S0149 The Leinster Hotel - this was Howl at the Moon. The preserved licence number removes any guilt about not revisiting...
Tuesday 2 April 2024
S1486 Purty Central
Sunday 31 March 2024
1009200 The Laurels
This labyrinthine pub was very difficult to navigate, due to being exceptionally busy - but, like the previous pub, I found a quiet block of seats.
In this case, the available seats had no decent view of a TV; but as Ireland were already winning comfortably I didn't feel much need to latch myself to every second of the game
Over a decade before I eventually made it here - even writing that it was that long ago makes me feel incredibly old - so many work nights out that never happened involved The Laurels. I was working in the Airton Road area of Tallaght with quite a few colleagues that lived in Clondalkin; and there were repeated suggestions of "we'll go to The Laurels and see where it goes from there". None of which even got far enough to actually get in to The Laurels; let alone find out where it would go from there - I suspect the Red Cow nightclub, probably.
But I made it here, eventually; and I'm getting towards the end of the Louis Fitzgerald pubs in Dublin. A tad reluctantly, as I loathe to give my money to a chain that both employs awful people (there are also some incredibly sound people working in the chain), and are directly responsible for me getting assaulted (by virtue of ejecting someone incredibly drunk and disorderly in to my path); but as long as they have Dublin pubs I need to tick them off.
Thursday 28 March 2024
Compulsory Closure - CPOs on Dublin pubs
Social Housing / "Slum Clearance"
As documented elsewhere, including the excellent Building Healthy Homes book, much of the housing stock in Dublin City was of a terrible quality well in to the 1960s. Slum clearance works occurred across the city enabling the construction of new Corporation housing; and larger landbanks were CPOed for development of large housing estates. These are the pubs that I have found CPOed for housing purposes:
Road Widening
Dublin has had roads widened on many occasions, going back to the Wide Streets Commission era; and again after motorised road traffic became common in the 30s. However, things got a lot worse in the 70s.
Plans for the Inner Tangent "motorway" - surface dual carriageway with flat junctions and traffic lights - around the city centre in the 1970s actually began, to some extent, with significant widening of the bulk of Parnell Street, Summerhill, Bridgefoot Street and some other areas. There is detailed coverage of this and other parts of this insane traffic plan online already, and I see no need to replicate someone else's work here!
Additionally, the installation of left turn lanes - something now being removed as unsafe for non-motorised road users - took out at least one pub.
Michael Delahunty, 2 South Great Georges Street - 1932
Wednesday 27 March 2024
1989's 100 Best Pubs
Monday 25 March 2024
S1485 Quinlans Black Lion
Clondalkin Village features four pubs that are exceptionally close to each other; and this is the one closest to the bus stop which I was alighting from, so it was the first of four for me on this trip.
A vast pub with a very modern fitout, the bulk of the pub was absolutely rammed due to the Ireland rugby match that was about to start - however, for whatever reason, despite having TVs the area inside the door was all free; so I was able to get a seat pretty easily.
It isn't much of a spoiler to say all four pubs in the village (and the fifth outside a bit) were on the busy end of things on this trip, but I'd say that - this seating area aside - the Black Lion was second busiest, and coming second, when even fifth is still doing trade that plenty of places would kill for, suggests significant popularity here.
The usual suburban put setup of sports, food and evening music are all heavily signalled on their social media and on signs inside the pub.
Saturday 23 March 2024
N0269 Killians of Naul
Open from 16:30, said Google Maps; so I rearranged the order of pubs I was being driven to so that we wouldn't arrive vastly before then.
On arrival at ~16:10, the pub was clearly already open. Oh well.
As we stepped inside, an indication of why the Google times might not be entirely up to date became apparent - Killians is cash only, so I don't get the impression than modern things like "the internet" are the most important thing for them (although they do have an Instagram page). My emergency 50, which has previously come in handy when one till in the otherwise card-only 3Arena had no card reader and allowed me to queue hop, got deployed again here.
A nice small-ish pub that is somehow both one room and two rooms at once - a linear setup with space either side of the main door - the bar doesn't go in to the unusual barrel roofed bit of the building.
If there was more tourist draws to Naul - there is the Seamus Ennis Centre, which as it has a theatre licence, I do need to visit - this would probably be quite well known as a pretty, traditional pub. I'll try make sure to drop back in whenever I do go see something in the Seamus Ennis.
Wednesday 20 March 2024
N0308 Quinns (Garristown)
Sunday 17 March 2024
DG0478 Man O'War
Thursday 14 March 2024
DG0488 Balscadden Inn
Monday 11 March 2024
Revisited Pubs February 2024
Thursday 7 March 2024
March 2024 Register Update
Tiny update this month, just the one thing of note
New:
1020862 NYX Hotel, Portobello - new hotel from what was Jurys Inns at Portobello Harbour
Tuesday 5 March 2024
N2258 Salmons
Another pub where it was rather awkward to actually get to the bar to get a pint. I wonder if I start a campaign to keep a drink orderers area clear - rather like the service area often left clear in pubs for staff - if anyone else would support it.
This is another Very Very Big Pub, in a suburban shopping centre. The current pub building is an early 2000s build, replacing the previous structure which was destroyed in a gas explosion in 1999.
I believe the new build may have moved slightly from the original footprint, with the original site having lain empty until a new Iceland - now becoming a Tesco after Iceland's second exit from the Irish market - store was built on it a few years ago.
The large lounge area has a larger dart board... painted on the wall around the normal size one. I might be able to consistently hit the outer one, I suspect.
A busy enough premises even as the match was drawing to a close, I was able to get a table under one of the TVs after having found it slightly difficult to actually get to the bar. For my second pint, this was ordered over the people at the bar and dropped down by the staff - so the crowding on the bar stools isn't actually a problem.
The pub has kitchens, but they were not operating when I visited; and this made me go a little quicker after realising I could make a train home in time for dinner rather than need to source food elsewhere.
Thursday 29 February 2024
N1433 Hartstown House
This area of Dublin's suburbia received relatively few pubs compared to earlier built areas; and those that were built were all roughly 1km away from each other, forming an accidental grid of sorts. This isn't easily identifiable on my pub map, particularly as the Blakes Tavern is now a Lidl and the Blanchardstown Centre has brought an absolute rake of licences to the area, but it does explain why some of the pubs are Very Very Big.
The Hartstown House is one of these Very Very Big pubs. It was also quite busy when I visited, with a large crowd watching a match on a projector TV - something once very common in Dublin pubs but now fading away, mainly because normal TVs are starting to get big enough and its easier to have multiple TVs rather than design the entire pub interior to face a projector screen.
This pub is run by the Meagher family, who also run the beautifully restored Meaghers on Eden Quay, and S0967 River Bar across the Liffey from it, so this visit here finishes off one of the smaller pub chains in the city.
Monday 26 February 2024
1002519 Hungry Tree
This pub has very recently rebranded, so recently in fact that they haven't removed all of the old branding yet
As the new name might suggest - I say might, as I'm not sure its actually intended to - there is a bit of a focus on food here, with most of the floor area set up as a restaurant when I visited. However, there is a corner of the bar - a giant snug, if you wish - reserved for drinking alone.
The current name is a little confusing to those who know the, Hungry Tree to be the tree that is slowly consuming a park bench off Constitution Hill, which is nowhere near this pub.
This area is perfectly acceptable for that purpose, although the pint options were a tad lacking. Both the dining area and this drinking area were relatively busy for a Sunday during January.
What is notable about this pub is that it is in a planned suburban residential development - albeit one that was set up to have a "village centre" feel with a core of retail. While pubs in planned developments are not new - they go back to the 30s if not before - they tailed off in the 1980s and some of the more recent ones have simply not taken. For example, the pub unit in Tyrrellstown has not been open for ~9 years; and has recently had its licence listed for sale and transfer; the landlord clearly giving up on it.
This pub clearly has taken root, and has been open under different names for a decent length of time.
Friday 23 February 2024
1007719 Fade Street Social
A stormy Tuesday night in January is no night to go pub ticking, and realistically this wasn't a pub ticking visit - but I did need to find somewhere for dinner for two; and the first place that crossed my mind (N2805 Krewe) was showing no availability on their website, and Fade Street Social was so near to where we were that I didn't even bother checking their website
I didn't need to - it was near completely empty when we arrived, and only the downstairs restaurant had started to get a little busy when we were finished - the cocktail bar upstairs still being just us.
Downstairs is a normal restaurant, specialising in steak; but upstairs is a cocktail bar with an extensive sufficiently-outdoor-to-smoke (I presume, it is outdoors anyway) terrace as well a reasonably sized bar room and a further dining room. The food on offer here is woodfired pizza, sorry, flatbreads; which are pretty decent - if a tad odd in terms of toppings; emphasising that they aren't normal pizza basically.
Not a great range of taps but a reasonable supply of Irish craft bottles; attentive staff and all in a nicely restored heritage building (it appears to have been Freemans food wholesale warehouse in Victorian times), with a fire going to stave off Storm Jocelyn outside.
This had been missed before now as it always seems exceptionally busy from the street level; but the upper bar area is big enough that it might not actually be that difficult to get in to - something I'll remember in future.