I had one evening here in the posh seats, a very long time ago, with table service for both booze (employer paid for) and betting (unfortunately not employer paid for, but I did leave with a few quid more than I went with).
I wouldn't go back these days, as I've no interest in supporting the greyhound industry.
There is something odd about international chains thinking that Irish is in more common use than it actually is; and using it in signage or names here. At least this time it's something substantial, and not Homebase putting up mangled translations for every aisle in the shop...
Dublin now has a number of fully pub licenced hostels, and this is far and away the biggest, with 628 beds. On opening, it made an obvious impact to the price of a hostel night, which had been around what a hotel room cost anywhere else prior to opening.
A small-ish bar sits to the rear of the ground floor of the hostel, beyond the check-in terminals and seating areas; and offers a limited enough range of drinks - but featuring some Irish independent products.
Some of the decor may be more suited to an Irish bar abroad; but it is likely what the mainly tourist customer base of a hostel expects to see
Said customer base also may expect different drinks, as there was someone rather surprised to find they didn't sell Fireball cinnamon liqueur (it isn't strong enough to be called whiskey in the EU).
A pub I've not been to in years, and which I doubt I can give a good idea of what it is currently like. I was semi-regular here in about 2008, but opening of Pantibar moved a lot of what I would have been going here for across the river.
The pub came to some notoriety recently when someone who moved in nearby during lockdown made significant complaints about the noise - noise they couldn't have heard when moving in, but surely had to be aware was going to come back. Due to the timing of when they moved in, this is not a clear-cut case of someone moving in beside something noisy and looking for it to be removed afterwards, but still...
I occasionally reference the Dying For A Pint blog on here, and note that this is one of the only cases of where a pub killing isn't on their yearly lists - a oft forgotten and harrowing guilty-but-insane case. The pub has changed its name since, but not for over a decade; usually any name changes after a killing are nearly immediate; so this was not done for that reason.
This hotel, formerly a Westin and named as such, had a specific rather than generic name applied to it in recent years; a process fraught with danger as whoever doing the naming didn't realise that the name of the street it sits on is a tad contraversial these days - the initial announcement of it as the Westmoreland Hotel was backed out from.
As it was changing category within Marriot from a Westin to an Autograph Collection hotel, a new name still needed to be picked - so they looked to the other side of the building and called it the College Green Hotel instead.
Formerly the headquarters of the Provincial Bank of Ireland, one of the constituents of the 1960s formed Allied Irish Banks; much of the ornamentation inside the hotel relates to its past banking days. The primary bar, with relatively limited opening hours, is in former vaults and is certainly one of the more interesting places to go for a pint - although its also one of the most expensive around, at €8 at time of visit
I'd been put off trying this for a long time as there are often uniformed doormen, and the attitude of five star hotels towards people wearing skate shoes and tshirts can sometimes be a little bit off-putting; but I would assume that many of their actual hotel residents would be dressed similarly these days; and the doorman was nowhere to be seen, so in I went.
I shouldn't have had any concerns. A comment on Instagram claims this is a decent place for a quiet Christmas time pint, a hard enough thing to find and something I'm loathe to reveal my own locations for, lest they become as mobbed as everywhere else - but someone else put it out in the open this time!
Due to The Well closing, my regular meeting was moved to a coffee shop (the horrors!), so the only revisited pub this month is N0097 Underdog
A few things of interest this month:
1020149 Premier Inn, Gloucester Street - open for a good while, licence number is about a year old; so possibly conversion from residents bar licence (the only time a number stays the same, that I've seen)
1020767 Premier Inn, Castleforbes Road - open not quite as long as above, but easily the same in terms of residents -> public conversion
1021439 ?????, Montague Street - new premises with same directors as 'ohana, built but as far as I know, not open yet.
Renumberings:
1021467 Fidelty, Queen Street - renumbered from N0215
Reappearances:
DG0480 Dempseys, Balbriggan - reopening (renamed, renovated) after many years closure
N1114 Bridge Inn, Chapelizod - reappearance with a new owner recorded, not someone I can find anything about
I'm not sure how much detail I can go in to about my first visit here; as it involved some level of subterfuge to get in to the residents bar during residents hours (a room was booked) on the assumption that a band would be drinking there; which they were. Some people involved may not want the details of how revealed, even over a decade later as it is now.
The second time is OK to mention though, as it was my then employers 25th birthday celebrations, and we were asked to 'dress 1980s'. Only a few members of staff managed to do a general 1980s look - some of the women managing to find dayglo leg warmers etc - and the rest of us did 1980s movies; with a passable Gordon Gekko for myself being assisted by finding an old fashioned menswear shop to sell me the white collar/blue body shirt and the braces required.
Probably not the most normal reasons for drinking in a hotel bar, but definitely counts for a tick.
This premises was under construction for so long that I wasn't sure if it was ever going to open - construction began in 2014, and the premises were marked up as 'opening soon' when I visited the nearby 1004917 Lemon & Duke in 2018. Not having opened by early 2020 meant it then got pushed out even further, and it finally opened in November 2022. Once open it was often closed when I went past - possibly related to going through the SCARP process (a lesser financial restructuring than examinership, to over-simplify) at the time.
But it was finally open when I went past last time.
The ground floor bar was empty, with the staff guiding you to the lifts to the rooftop bar - I suspect you could get served in the ground floor bar also; but the rooftop bar is more appealing anyway.
The bar area here isn't massive, with a small-ish area inside and an even smaller outdoor area wrapping around, which was pretty close to full on what was a nice day. Other floors have a cocktail bar and a restaurant.
The building itself isn't massive, taking up some of what was once the Creation Arcade - the postal address on its licence is still down as Creation Arcade as it happens - a very early indoor shopping mall noted for its fashion retailers.
There is something oddly appealing about being in a rooftop bar that is primarily accessed by lifts - you hear the arrival ding and can look as the doors sweep open to see who is joining the crowd in the bar. It was primarily staff members, rather than additional patrons; but the bar did begin to get fairly full before I left.
This is an interesting addition to the venues of Dublin, although it could benefit from being a little bit larger on each floor - not something actually possible with the site, though!
