RetroReviews: S3908 The Well

This is almost certainly the most frequent entry in my Revisited Pubs list that didn't already have an article to link to. This is because a monthly event I attempt to attend - the brick.ie Lego meetup - has normally been held here since the Lego store opened on Grafton Street. This being the venue is at least partially my fault, having been able to run through potential options that would have the space that we were used to in the old location; and have food. We are occasionally unable/unwilling to get a booking due to a clash - the meetings are not particularly raucous and sometimes there's something else on in The Well that really is!

Now, The Well only opened in 2018; which is after the late 2016 date where my cutoff for pre- and post- blog is. But, as the letter-series licence number indicates, this is a much older premises than that.

Originally opening along with the extension to the Stephens Green Centre (that gave us TK Maxx and the Fitzwilliam Hotel), this was Dublin's short-lived branch of Planet Hollywood. I never attended - the other Fifth Class in my primary school had their school tour there while we went bowling, the bastards - but it was actually open for a bit longer than I remembered; December 1997 until October 2001, although it had been sold to Capital Bars in the interim.

And Capital then converted it to what I first attended it as, the Dandelion nightclub/bar - its name referencing the Dandelion Market, which once operated on part of the site that the Stephens Green Centre was built on, and which was a legendary gig venue in its own right.

Dandelion had a number of incarnations, including as a more serious dance venue, and latterly as a more food focused bar. 

The Well has some occasional events that hark back to the nightclub era; but is generally run more as the food focused bar that the late stage Dandelion was, offering Italian main courses and pizzas alongside the nearly entire Molson Coors tap lineup - Aspalls Cyder instead of the Bulmers or Orchard Thieves taps you'd regularly find in Dublin being a notable standout from that.