N1422 Leonards

"Regulars Only" is something you'd think I might hear from door staff occasionally doing this - but I don't, because I usually go during the day when there aren't any.

In the case of Leonards, it was written on the doors instead. But considering the pub advertises its daytime food offerings extensively - social media posts as well as signs outside - I just pretended I temporarily couldn't read and went on in. And was served without proving any regular status.

This ticking trip was on Good Friday, a day on which I have little experience of the potential crowds - we've only had a few that we can drink on, with a pandemic in the interim; and I think this is my first ticking day on a Good Friday. From this pub on, there was a noticeable element to the Good Friday crowd -  tradesmen who have done a mornings work and knocked off early for the long weekend - with a table of Des Kelly fitters having a fried lunch amongst the customers here.

The "Regulars Only" sign is clearly there for a reason; I am guessing relating to weekends and evenings; but there seems to be no problem popping in here during the day to try stake out your regular status. This is very much an "estate pub", but in the Irish tradition - it is in a housing estate, it is in a shopping centre; but it has a pitched roof (well, it has a mansard roof - but its not a flat roofed box), it is in good condition inside and out and it has windows. 

S2031 Merry Ploughboy

Maybe if we move on again, we'll get some space?

No. And even though the two bus loads that arrived here, another show bar, were directed upstairs; there wasn't even a perch in here. But there was a covered smoking area - and a vastly larger partially covered, but still completely soaked one, that looks from Streetview to have been built for the 'outdoor summer' of 2021.

This trip was never about finding a nice comfy pub to sit down in, it was to tick places that are harder to get to public transport - and despite the large bus park here, you can't get here easily on regular buses - there are eight services a day to/from Dundrum Luas stop on weekdays and zero on weekends.

It also wasn't about watching the rugby match, which was creating much of the demand in the pubs; and ended badly while we were standing inside the pub before heading outside. At least the ticking trip was a success.

1002618 Taylors Three Rock

Would we get some respite from how busy the Southsides pubs were here, in this vast premises?

Would we bollox. Only one area appeared to be open to normal punters - this is a show bar, and the buses for same arrived when we were leaving later - and despite this section being pretty big; we ended up perching at a barrel inside the door.

This is the final premises I needed to visit that gives me a double tick - there are two licences here; a hotel (public bar) licence and a theatre licence - a duality that allows serving during normal hours without requiring there to be a performance on; and to serve during a performance without needing a specific late exemption. 

Once upon a time, these were common across Dublin - most nightclubs and some late bars had them to allow late opening, which at times went much later than what became allowable after the 2008 "reforms" - the first stage of the neo-prohibitionist streak of recent decades. Many premises have got rid of the theatre licence still, but Taylors is still present. I'm not sure if the hotel is actually available to book these days, but there is no requirement to keep the hotel going to keep the licence going; once it is a public licence - the residents only version, which I don't cover, needs residents to exist.

I assume that the bulk of the trade in the section that I visited was locals, rather than people early for the show; and it gives the impression of a nicely busy locals pub from that crowd.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

S0397 Byrnes of Galloping Green

A wonderful traditional pub, with a wonderful name, that could be in any rural town in Ireland and yet could also only be in Dublin. Rather hard to describe in words, this is well worth a visit, and has a 46A bus stop right outside it - so no excuse not to visit really.

Amongst the greebling here - an A/B payphone, old photos and old breweryana - is a framed newspaper clipping that has lead to my single highest view count on a post to date.

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(I had actually taken a photo of the framed clipping, but the glass was so reflective you'd mostly see me; not the clipping - so here's the INA version of it)

I didn't manage to get a seat throughout my entire visit here, the pub being that busy - and yet its probably the only pub I'd be willing to go stand in again (at my age, with my knees - I was never told that your body started failing in your 30s).

The outside of the pub has signage stating it to to be the "Philipstown House"; a name I can't find an obvious explanation for - the name of the area on all old maps is Galloping Green, with no suitably named adjoining townlands.

S0400 Stillorgan Orchard

This thatched premises - why are there comparatively so many thatched pubs in suburban South Dublin? - has a few different bars within to choose from, and I went in to the "sports bar".

This felt like a hotel lobby. A nice hotel lobby, but a lobby none the less. One major factor was the provision of living room style couches, facing the large TVs, which are not quite what you expect as normal furniture in a sports bar.

This also wasn't particularly busy, albeit other areas of the pub might have been busier. One of the cheaper pints in SCD, at 5.80 for a Smithwicks on the day of my visit, this might be somewhere to go for a quieter and marginally less wallet-shattering option to watch a match.

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

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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.

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. 

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

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.

S1487 The Waterside

The previous pub writeup had a bit of history, and so shall this. Actually, this ends up being quite a bit of history.

This cavernous structure is a replacement for a much older pub on/near this site, which was one of the series of pubs that sat alongside nearly every lock on the Grand Canal. 

Formerly the 9th Lock, and latterly the puntastic Lough & Quay, the pub building was replaced in the early 2000s with a building including a large pub, multiple retail units and a restaurant unit that I don't think ever operated as such - it is now a gym.

Many of the locks on the Grand Canal had a pub (or hotel) beside it, primarily because the passenger flyboats that plied trade on the canal would have stopped at each lock awaiting the water level changes required to pass said lock. This would provide time for crew and passengers to sink a pint. These were also often the official boarding points, so people may have been waiting for the boat to arrive.

This pub was, as you'd guess from the old name, at the 9th lock; and had lock-neighbours with pubs; but they're all gone.

The 10th lock is relatively close to the West, and the 11th even closer to the 19th; so the next lock with a pub that direction was the 12th - where the imaginatively named 12th Lock Bar burned down in the early 1990s (the 13th lock is well in to County Kildare).

Going East, there was nothing at the 8th lock, at least that I'm aware of; but the 7th lock had... can you guess it yet? - the 7th Lock pub; or as it was called latterly, the Killeen House. This pub closed for an apartment development in about 2006, recently enough to still appear in some online directories. I began working nearby in 2007 and do not remember the pub; but my office was directly above a different pub (most recently S4157 Parkwest Tavern), so we didn't travel much.

The 6th, 5th, and 4th locks now all appear very quickly; but the 3rd also had a pub at it - and it finally breaks the naming scheme; but not the thing of being closed; for it was N1117 Blackhorse Inn.

So, the Waterfront is a survivor amongst these lockside pubs. It's also busy as hell, based on my single visit.

On entering the pub, I was asked by a manager at the door as to what I was looking for - and at this stage, I wanted food. There were, however, no tables available so I was sat at the bar to wait for a table and have access to drinks. And, unfortunately, forgotten about. 

After two pints, and reminding them that I was actually waiting for a table, I was whisked to an available one; and service from this point on was impeccably attentive (it had been fine at the bar to begin with). The food was, also, good

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.

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...

S1486 Purty Central

It isn't common that a pub has a generally accepted name which is never actually written on the outside of the building at all; but The [Purty] Central is one - outside of some window graphics with Purty on them, the pub is completely externally branded as The Central Bar currently; although Streetview archives show both Purty Central and The Village Inn branding in times past. All their social media uses Purty Central as does their domain name. I suspect only a regular or a staff member can answer as to why it uses both; and knowing the way this goes, one or both may turn up in the comments or on social media to tell me!

Again, a busy pub; but there were a few more seats available here than in previous visits and attempts in the village. I located myself at a table in the window, and realised that I could actually see both previous pubs from my seat - the Laurels clearly, the Black Lion if I craned my head a bit. There aren't many if any other places where you can see two different licenced premises from your seat; and this shows the density and competition within Clondalkin village

My seat was well located to see the second half of the Ireland rugby match, and also clearly on a prime route for floor staff coverage - the second my glass went down empty, the offer of delivery of another would come; and it would rapidly arrive with card reader in hand. I would probably have bailed out to check for space in The Steering Wheel a little bit quicker if I wasn't ambushed by pints.