N0318 White Sands Hotel

Tamangos! Where the gang goes!, said the ad that everyone living anywhere near Dublin the 90s and early 00s probably heard multiple times a day.

It was pretty much the norm for a hotel to have a nightclub in that era, and while nearly all of them are now gone (excepting on Harcourt Street, where most remain); Tamango - the s has gone missing - was one of the last ones standing. But it hasn't opened regularly since 2020; although it does open for specific performances, underage nights and fundraisers.

The hotel bar, however, is still very much open. I visited on a warm end-of-Summer/early Autumn evening, and sat outside as the bar was pretty close to full. With the nearly-local Hope on tap, this is definitely a nice place to spend a bit of time. It'd be even nicer if they could make the carpark vanish to improve the view, somehow

One of the nicer pint vistas in Dublin, but it does suffer a lot when you sit down and the carpark becomes your eyeline pic.twitter.com/6Am9dRJEii

— Cian Duffy (@cian_duffy) August 30, 2024

RetroReview: S0366 Johnnie Foxes

Dinner, a show, and an argument about whether this is actually the highest pub in Ireland. What more could anyone want?

This is somewhere else I attended due to work, but did actually imbibe (a half, as far as I remember) - shortly after some major yet careful refurbishments, which upgraded electrical and safety systems but left the pub looking almost identical to before, I did the tech ops for a breakfast show outside broadcast from here.

The pub is not the highest in Ireland, but uses the terms "famed as" or "reputed as" to make the statement seem like someone else's fault. It is, I am quite sure, the highest in Dublin and is also the furthest South in Dublin by a reasonable amount (I direct those who believe that Little Bray is still in Dublin to look at the 1898 boundary changes - The Coach Inn is in Wicklow)

It is twee, but if you stay away from the main show hall there are nice niches in the bar to bury yourself in, amongst the huge amount of greebling. My memory is that the food is quite good.

N0317 Grand Hotel Malahide

I entered this, well, Grand sized hotel through the door closest to the road entrance, which brought me in right beside a relatively small bar that appeared to have been dropped out of the 1980s - dark wood, dark carpets, chandeliers, and a limited range of drinks but with lots of fortified wines - a nice nostalgia trip.

But as I later found out, this is not the only bar in this hotel; and indeed might actually be intended to be the Residents Bar - the website describes it - the Griffon Bar - as being open for special occasions, or for residents at night. It was early evening and not a special occasion when I dropped in, so perhaps it opens when the hotel is busier too.

The Matt Ryan Bar is the main one in the hotel, which is rather more modern; but I'd made my tick before realising it existed.

RetroReview: S3221 Drury Court Hotel / Caribou (when PMacs)

Dark. Drippy candles. Monster Munch. 

You know what to expect in a Cassidys setup, but unfortunately there's now only two of them left; this not being one of them

You also know what to expect in an Animal Collective place - mid-century modern furniture, pizza - and I'm fairly sure this is what's available here now.

1020397 Motel One

This isn't my first trip to *a* Motel One; having gone to the rooftop cocktail bar in the Leipzig Post branch of the chain before. So I thought I knew what to expect - cocktail heavy, with a signature cocktail on the menu.

Instead its gin-heavy here; and the rest of the setup appears to have been decided on by looking at what people report as their likes from traditional Dublin pubs. They sell Guinness - just Guinness - on draught; and the only food is toasties.

For the entire hotel. Residents are told they can order takeaway to their rooms.

So there's a vast bar, on a busy shopping street, where you can only get draught Guinness, or a few other beer options - Irish independent products featuring heavily, thankfully for me - in bottle. I would not be surprised if this changes over time, as the potential to make money here on busier weekends has to be quite high.

RetroReview: S3214 Shelbourne Park Greyhound Stadium

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.

1021092 Clink i Lár

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 

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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).

RetroReview: S3178 Street 66 (Front Lounge)

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.

S3802 College Green Hotel

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

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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!

Revisited Pubs August 2024

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

September 2024 Register Update

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

RetroReview: S3037 Dylan Hotel

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.

1019597 Hyde

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!