1021081 Blackbanks Bar & Grill

Formerly The Foxhound, the closure of this pub during the pandemic was much lamented due to it featuring in The Van; the beloved Barrytown Trilogy movie which was once a feature of TV3 weekends, along with that Brendan Grace performance that they must have showed a thousand times - no hyperbole there. There were plenty of glowing obituaries of sorts, but much of the sheen was taken off this on finding out how much the original staff were stiffed for, though.

The pub was bought by the McHugh group, operator of a number of Centras, some specialist off-licences and wine bar/restaurants and extensively renovated, reopening in 2024. This renovation has modernised the particularly dated exterior, reopening a blocked up doorway and removing the faux mansard roofs attached to the sides amongst other things

Something that they didn't consider in that renovation is air conditioning; with the main bar being particularly stuffy on my visit; but there is a roof terrace I could have presumably gone out to - there was a requirement to wait to be seated, but I was offered multiple options - except for needing the plug sockets which are sited at nearly every seat and also under the bar counter at multiple points.

The interior to is to a very high quality, with some design features I'm starting to recognise from one of the main pub interior designers (one being prop old bottles of 'whiskey' on display shelves which are reprinted labels on modern empties filled with caramel water - indistinguishable to 99% of people).

There isn't any outdoor seating out the front, currently at least; this was a car park in the Foxhound days and faces on to housing so may not be particularly suitable. There was also a bouncer on - well, floating near rather than directly on - the door; which is odd on a weekend afternoon, but the pub was much busier than the others I visited on the same day so there is potentially justification for this.