A week or so before this visit, I had stayed in the Sligo sister hotel of this, also called The Address - and had snarked at the bar/restaurant being called North, as I wouldn't consider Sligo to be particularly Northern.
On arriving here I found that the bar is again called North. They're all called North in this chain, which is from Donegal and has what I'd consider a legitimate claim to the term. All's good.
The hotel here is an old country house with an added bedroom wing; with the bar and restaurant in what I assume are some genuine outbuildings. There's a more restaurant-y bit, but you can drink there; and what seemed to be a bar or function room section that was quite loud. The outdoor area is very nice in the right weather, even if the plastic sheep are a bit of an odd choice...
There is a bit of housing being developed nearby here, so this is likely to be their local, as such; considering none were ever developed in the bulk of Citywest and both S3757 Browns Barn and the pub in Fortunestown has closed.
I'd been to this hotel a few times before, using the conferencing facilities - most notably, many years ago, an all-hands meeting in work telling us that a certain % were being laid off because the CEO needed a new 911 "times were tough"; but I'd never drunk here prior to this visit.
The bar of the Green Isle is large, and was busy and even slightly raucous when we visited - this certainly stands in for the lack of any pub in this bit of Clondalkin.
The hotel itself seems to be extremely popular with trades/builders from down the country using it as their Dublin base - there are even signs asking you to clean your boots when coming in from the carpark (incidentally, one of the worst designed / tightest carparks I've ever been in); so I suspect the bar is also busy with that custom on weekday/Sunday evenings.
It is still, however, clearly a hotel bar without much attempt to make it feel more like a pub - for instance, it is accessed behind reception.
I'm not sure there's a current pub name I have to try so hard not to misspell - the Colosseum in Walkinstown no longer holding that name, thankfully. "Bulgers" seems to scan better, despite Bugler being a semi common surname, and a type of musician at that. I may just be remembering a horrific incident that was heavily reported when I was a kid, though.
There's more than a few newspaper archive references to "Bulgers" as well, covering both the pre- and post-spellcheck eras of newspaper editing (the pub has been Buglers since 1954) so at least it's not only me.
Another packed pub - three in a row, albeit they aren't all that far apart - I ended up in a corner of the bar rather than in the fairly recently renovated lounge, or the covered outdoor area so new you can see the demolition of the old one on Streetview.
Approaching this pub from the road feels a bit weird - as the pub doesn't address the main road at all.
When you do get in to it, via the start of a housing estate, it becomes clear that the pub is in a very old building - a Georgian manor house called, appropriately, Eden House.
Eden House - the manor, that is - was redeveloped in the mid 1990s in to the pub we now have; with a small retail/office development and a housing estate built on the lands.
The pub itself has a variety of Georgian or Victorian features left inside, and has quite an unusual layout due to the room layout of the house itself. It was also absolutely and utterly rammed when I visited, so I ended up outside rather than continuing to wander around inside. This may be worth a revisit when quiet; but the reason it has ended up so late in my ticks is that it isn't quite the easiest place to get to!
Another single storey, shopping centre carpark pub but with rather less of the semi-architectural interest of the Coach House - this is a bit of a box.
And a very busy box it was too; with not a lot of free tables and a huge amount of food being served at the time of my visit. Surprisingly, there was a single Irish independent tap on offer - Trouble Ambush - which is what I enjoyed at the only free table I could find.
The pub apparently features a six-table snooker hall - with snooker tables very rare in pubs to begin with, and even more than one cue sports table of any description being rarer this is not something you're going to find often.
Sandyford, the business park area, has lots of buses; and is walkable from the Luas. It has two not-really pubs and once had a hotel.
Sandyford, the village it's named after, has one irregular bus and eluded me for quite a while - it took close to three hours to get here due to poor meshing of public transport timings; and a lengthy amount of time to get to the next pub afterwards; but I made it.
The Sandyford House claims to date to the 1690s and certainly bits of the pub are very old; but with the 16 years of Streetview passes showing three completely different paint jobs and multiple different approaches to outdoor seating, they certainly aren't unwilling to modify this place! The balcony seating, removed since the earliest passes, is an interesting loss.
I didn't venture any further than the front bar - named Boss Crokers, after the Irish-American politician and former namesake of a pub on the Quays, most recently N0185 Index. I got one of the window bays on my own, as the bar was not terribly busy when I attended.
A longer visit than normal ensued here, due to the bus times; and I took a few photos of some of the historical paperwork on the walls... which I now can't find. I'm certainly not going on another five hour round-trip mission to re-take them!
If I ever do get around to writing something on the morphology of Dublin pubs, the single storey, high roofed open-plan pub (often, but far from always, beside a shopping centre) will probably take the place of the "generic 80s suburban pub", even if some examples are not from the 80s. And they're a type of pub we're rapidly losing, as many of them succumb to the appeal of their car parks to apartment or supermarket developers.
And indeed, we may yet lose the Coach House - planning was granted in 2023 to demolish and replace with apartments and a "cafe/wine bar" a quarter of the size of the current pub. However, it is still trading currently.
A good example of that form of pub, and with a better range of drinks than many pubs in the city, I'd probably be fairly annoyed if I was local and this was proposed for demolition.
This place currently trades as a restaurant and as such, you do need to eat to get served here. It has previously - while still Admiral - had external signage stating that it was a karaoke bar; but this seems to have been removed around the time the fake bow and prow of a ship were added to the outside walls!
A pan-Eastern-and-Central-European restaurant, this was frequently formerly described as a "Russian" restaurant; but the prominent Ukrainian flags flying from outside the premises should dissuade you from this.
The pub itself is under a multi-storey car park, the construction of which involved demolishing an older pub - The Peacock - further down Marlborough Street. The name, and I assume the licence - such a low serial number indicates a very old licence - moved up to the corner with Cathal Brugha Street after that. The Peacock was sold off in around 2002 after multiple legal issues including an attemp by Gardai to have its licence removed.
There were a few other brief incarnations after this, including an Eastern European bar "Baltika", but it opened as the marine-themed Admiral in the late 00s.
I'm barely a bar reviewer, so getting a food review from me isn't happening - but I was happy enough with the schnitzel I got. Beer choices on draught are more than you'd expect in most restaurants, but do primarily consist of the national draught lager/pilsners of the countries that the restaurant serves the food of.
Another of my "opened too late in the evening" Skerries misses from my 2021 visit; the Bus Bar burnt down in late 2023. Unlike the slow progress of reopening we see with some other pub fires of the past few years; work started very rapidly here and the pub reopened within ~13 months.
Since the pandemic, a portion of the front of the pub has been taken up by a coffee shop; and this is retained in the rebuilt pub. This leaves a small bar to the front, but with a large lounge to the rear.
Said front bar is quite nice, a one-manner in layout that could convince you that you are in a tiny pub somewhere rather than an element of a bigger setup.
The pubs name intrigues me; but I presume is easily explained by the bus stop for various services from Dublin (and to Balbriggan and rarely Dundalk) being pretty much right outside the door. It has been called that name since opening in the early 1930s.
I missed this on my previous trip out to Skerries as it opens quite late on weekdays - as then did half the pubs in the town - and I could only really get one of the early evening openers done before going for my train.
The front of the pub looks like something you'd see in a tiny village, not a large enough suburb / seaside resort. The inside extends well beyond the area that the shopfront would suggest, with a rabbit warren of small areas to the front, where you should be able to find somewhere to wedge yourself in, even when busy. It all opens out a bit at the back with a smoking area and big screens.
I still haven't been to all of the remaining pubs in Skerries - the town still has a sizeable number despite a significant decline in recent years - and while DG0492 The Gladstone Inn is definitely a more traditional pub; Nealons brings in a bit of modernity in a completely inoffensive way.
A pub reopening should always be a good occasion, but finding out that one is about to reopen just as you're ticking off all the pubs near it can be a tad annoying. And so it was when I visited Balbriggan in early 2024 and found Dempseys approaching the end of its refurb.
Formerly The Millrace, one of those pubs where the sales ads online linger for years after being sold; and indeed it lingered for years closed too - the last social media activity for the pub was in 2015 but it may have survived til the pandemic.
The refurb was extensive and the fairly dated interior you can (currently, anyway) see in the linked sales ad is gone; replaced with the faux-old type that has returned to fashion in recent years and should hopefully age well. Despite trying to look old, it's definitely the most modern pub in Balbriggan as it stands.
On opening, a relatively strict dress code was posted, with one entry - "no coats" - raising a lot of eyebrows in a country with a climate that often requires them. This, I suspect, was there to ensure that anyone wanting to flaunt a jacket from specific brands that have acquired a particular reputation wouldn't bother coming in.
That said, I wasn't barred from entering with mine on, despite it being from one of the brands sort of on the edges of that - but it wasn't black or grey so that might have been enough!
May's revisits have a few 'new' entries, as in not the ones you see every month; but the old classics turn up regardless. Also, as I now have so few city centre places to visit anew, I end up in places I've been before more and more often.
S0083 Beer Temple - pint before dinner time
S0106 The Porterhouse - dinner time. Not sure why I didn't just have a burger in the Beer Temple, but that isn't important
N0097 Underdog - regular visit
S0172 The Waterloo - hiding in a snug wasting time before a work event nearby
S0027 The Lombard - bus was so delayed due to roadworks after said work event that I had 65 minutes wait for a train from Pearse
S0077 Nearys - regular meeting location
S0088 Foggy Dew - burning up time before a bus, and seeing some tourists making a scene of themselves
1000393 Gilbert & Wright - going in to the Wright Group Time Machine, as the pub I was trying to tick off was completely full
N0006 Brew Dock - dinner again
S0026 Lincolns Inn - waiting for a dinner appointment nearby, writeup to come
S0048 Kennedys - after said dinner
1016206 Brewdog - waiting for a different dinner appointment in a different pub-licenced restaurant
Every month, I do a post listing the pubs I've revisited in the past month - I can tell from the views that people actually do bother reading these; and it provides some evidence that I don't just chase the new places.
One extremely regular entry on that list is Underdog, on the corner of Capel and Bolton Streets.
The writeup I have been linking to for it is from August 2016, is very brief, and refers to three incarnations of the pub ago - it having had two different Galway Bay Brewery pubs in it between then and now.
I don't usually care if I link to an old writeup - the Beer Temple will continue to get a pre-GBB The Oak visit linked forever probably - but this one is so poor I'm updating it; particularly as I'm usually there monthly.
The physical pub here is a Victorian corner pub, extended in to a modern building at the rear. In the past, I suspect it went in to this building also; for this was a hotel for a number of decades in the early 20th century. The interior is not Victorian, so it isn't on the lists of Victorian pubs - but in this part of the city, most of the pubs are well over 150 years old. It spent a bit of time between pub incarnations as a chain off-licence, before becoming a sort-of craft beer bar nearly 15 years ago. It hasn't moved too far away from this since.
On to the current operations. Underdog is basically the last full craft bar in Dublin that isn't owned by a brewery; and potentially the only non brewery owned bar that doesn't sell Guinness.
There's a small number of bar staff here - including the owner, all well educated in the product they sell. There aren't really any fixed taps; but there are some near permanent products here - all from Irish or international independent breweries. You'll find something to drink.
The kitchen here hasn't operated as a regular thing since the last Galway Bay era; but it may yet reopen. Until then, if you need food, you really don't need to go far - this section of Bolton Street has multiple interesting and good quality Brazilian places of various kinds, as well as other pubs doing food.
Yet another case of deploying the DW-from-Arthur meme here, and ignoring the largest set of signs telling me that a hotel bar is residents only; specifically because a former work colleague drinks here frequently; while not living in the hotel
Indeed, he drank here when the hotel only had a residents bar licence, but a year or so ago the licence changed type to a public bar one - the serial number not changing in the process oddly enough.
On barging past the further set of signs inside the lobby telling me I would not be served in the bar, and further ignoring a sign telling me to wait to be seated; I was served and able to sit where I wanted.
The pint wasn't the best either, possibly because they aren't selling very much when clearly trying to dissuade people from coming in!
It isn't often that I arrive at a pub and find that it has changed name without me knowing - indeed I don't think it's ever happened before. Pubs have shut down completely on me a number of times, so it's not like I pick up everything of course - I have even got a bus specifically to try tick somewhere off to find it dark and empty; having shut actual years beforehand (N0138 The Hollybrook, formerly Gilbert & Wright Clontarf).
In this case, even Google was unaware that The Concorde was not The Concorde anymore; having changed at some point since it was offered for sale in 2021. That article mentions the pub being kept in excellent condition, so my initial assumption that it had been renovated after sale may be inaccurate - it is in very good condition throughout.
You'll notice I've said "was". In the time between my visit and the writeup being published, the pub has reverted to The Concorde. It's just as well my correction on Google Maps wasn't accepted!
It's a large enough pub and it's sort of hard to say whether the area I was in was a bar area or a games room; featuring a pool table, and also some of my most disliked things in a pub - gaming machines. However, unlike some other pubs, they weren't right inside the door or blaring noise; so I'm more tolerant of them here.
Edenmore formerly had a second pub, N0741 Edenmore House, but this closed in the mid 2010s. The licence was moved to 1012867 Temple Bar Inn, one of the last licence transfers I ever saw reported in detail in a newspaper - court reporting of less salacious cases being an early victim of cuts in journalism!
Creches - not something you usually associate with a pub; except possibly as an insult for somewhere known to be a tad lax with age requirements...
However, in a previous incarnation, this pub had a creche for the children of its customers, opening in 1996, but not mentioned in reports of the significant fire in 2002 which gutted the pub - for the second time in ten years, it having previously been burnt out in 1992.
The reports on the €4m arson in 2002 do mention another continuing oddity - the pub had, and still has, its own newsagents - currently branded as an XL Stop and Shop.
While common in rural areas to this day, pubs with their own shop are extremely uncommon in Dublin, excluding the dwindling off-licence sections that some pubs still retain.
I'm aware of only one other conventional one (S3046 The Swallows in Deansrath features a Daybreak), plus the ability to buy some of the decorative hardware in S3271 Marys. Even the rural village pubs of North County Dublin don't retain shops at this stage - albeit there is one still intact at N0253 The Brock, it appears to be closed down by even the 2009 Streetview pass.
Despite this slight anachronism, the pub is modern and well presented, having been refit extensively in 2015. It's on the bigger side for older suburban pubs, so there's a few areas to pick from.
In my previous post, I mentioned that the pub was often claimed to be one of the roughest in Dublin; but it was perfectly safe when I was there.
Well, here we go again...
The Newtown House's reputation is at least in part down to it having no windows. But it's in very good (if not excellent) condition inside, and again I had absolutely no issues heading in for a pint.
Well, some older ladies decided that they were going to take half of my table; but we ended up having a conversation about the pubs in the area and some of the now-gone hotels that used be on the Malahide Road, those having had active and very popular nightclubs when they were younger
The pub was put on the market in 2022 but I'm not entirely sure if it sold - it is still listed on JP Younge's website.
Whenever there's a future refurb - although it's not like it needs one urgently - a few windows in the front will do more to dispel the image the pub has than anything else could. This has been done to a few pubs in Dublin 8 in the last decade to great affect.
This pub frequently turns up when people are nominating places as the "roughest pub" in Dublin. Lets see about that...
I have been told a number of times that I resemble an undercover Garda, and that added with the fact that I go to a lot of these pubs alone may be part of why I effectively never have trouble in these apparently terrible pubs.
I suspect maturation of the areas they're in, the people causing problems being barred, and the growth in garden bars during the pandemic reducing the "need" for some people to get in to pubs have all had an impact; but this pub was fine. A bit smelly, but fine.
There were two doormen inside the pub, but sitting off to one side and not making entrance difficult. Beamish on tap at a reasonable price.
I believe this was used as the filming location for outside shots of a pub in Love/Hate - the long closed Leonards on Watling Street/Victoria Quay being the indoor filming location; and I once had to clamber over the wall of the carpark outside to go do a service visit to the dentists in the same shopping complex due to said filming. I imagine it was a more threatening pub in the TV show than in reality!
This hotel isn't particularly close to Dublin Airport, but that's what it's called... probably an element of not wanting to call it Hilton Darndale coupled with an attempt to convince visitors that it is significantly closer to the airport than it actually is - a trend plenty of hotels in North County Dublin follow.
There is a very large bar and restaurant here, and it is open to the public - although there was a bouncer at the entrance, not a common sight in a hotel bar in the early evening.
I suspect they'd rather prefer people come in here to eat, but there is no issue not doing that. There's a fairly good range of *bottled* Irish independent brewery beers to add to the most generic hotel tap lineup possible; and plenty of different areas to pick in the bar.
Would I trust a pandemic-era set of opening hours on social media; a similar old, contradictory one on Google Maps or just assume that a seaside pub is likely to be open in the early afternoon on a weekend?
I went for the latter and got on a 33B; and as luck would have it, the timings from almost half a decade ago were wrong - and The Brook was indeed already open. Pandemic era opening hours still lurk on the internet in multiple places - Facebook believes the pub in my previous writeup still closes at 8.
A nice pub that I suspect gets very busy on warmer days, with a single large room more reminiscent of a country pub; despite being served by regular service buses and beside a very popular beach.
Keelings is the only pub in Donabate, for now at least - Smyths having closed its doors in August 2024, with the contents auctioned off.
Luckily for drinking capacity in the town, Keelings is fairly large, but its unfortunately also not incredibly memorable. Suburban pubs don't really need to be - people go to them because they're local, and form connections with the pub via people, via events, social activities and so on; rather than because they're incredibly notable for some reason. Just existing is no guarantee of success - the place still needs to be well run - but the result is often somewhere very similar to other places I've been before. And that isn't a bad thing.
There's some Hope taps, which is always nice to see in pubs near (or near-ish, this far out) to the brewery - Hope having established themselves as the default craft choice in Northside and North Dublin pubs in the same way as Rye River have in West Dublin / North Kildare, and Wicklow Wolf on the Southside.
I'm pulling this writeup out of order; as the news has just broken that this distillery is closing - as in fully closing, with no clarity on whether it is ever reopening at all.
Distillation has stopped, with the visitor centre closing imminently - I've seen claimed dates of "Tuesday" - as in May 20th - or June 1st for this; but there's no info on any of their social media channels about this.
I only visited a few weeks ago, and this writeup would have been in August otherwise; but I feel it should be pushed forward in case anyone wants to go during the very limited time the visitor centre has left.
They do (or did) tours here, and also hosted events; but I turned up and asked what the options were for being served without doing a tour; if they could do this at all. Most of Dublin's distilleries have an explicit bar, and are totally willing to serve you without a tour - but there isn't quite so obvious a bar here, despite the full pub licence.
However, they could still serve me. Two tasting flights were on offer; as well as some mixed drinks. I opted for their premium tasting flight, at €35, which featured some quite old whiskey - sourced, obviously, for a new distillery - as well as their own products.
The sourced products in said flight were exceptional, chosen to exhibit their casking more than their age and doing so very well. The younger, on-site made product was of a good quality, young but better than many newer Irish whiskeys I've had by a decent margin.
The staff member that served me knew her stuff, both on the distillery and on Irish whiskey in general. Should the staff all be laid off in the coming days as looks to be the case, she would be an asset to any other distillery tour - as presumably are the others if the training and experience are similar.
I hope that the closure here is brief; and that the staff are able to find roles elsewhere - it is a particularly bad portent for the distilling industry here when an established distillery, with a competent visitor experience; owned by a mini-major of the drinks world feels the need to close.
Around the time of my visit here, the yet to be renamed Press Up Entertainment - now Eclective - were in various forms of financial trouble.
My visit here may have suggested why.
This vast, vast restaurant pub was under a quarter full. Shortly after being seated, it became clear that the table beside me had been given the wrong main course, providing a significant hit to the kitchens food costs.
My own meal was then delivered, with the wrong main course...
I did get what I'd ordered, it was fine but not fantastic - a common problem with Press Up menus - and a tad dear. But the margin for my visit would have been reduced; and with a giant, mostly empty dining room to light and heat, they would need a very big margin to keep going.
I also don't think "doolally" is a good name for a pub, but there's plenty of premises I'd suggest get renamed if anyone would listen, and I'm not sure this would be even in the top ten!
When I first cased out the bar here for drinks, it was closed - with a sign saying that drinks could be got from The Horsebox, a cafe in an actual converted horsebox in the hotel lobby. As I suspected this might be more for residents, I came back some hours later and got in to the now open, large, but basically empty bar.
During my time there I was offered the food menu and asked if I'd picked something multiple times - I didn't want to eat yet, and didn't order anything; but it gave me the feeling that outside drinkers are tolerated at best. I'd suggest that if you intend to go here, go here to eat.
Going here to eat was something I'd planned to do - it was the third and final location of the surprisingly mobile Canteen restaurant, which spent some time operating relatively close to my house (in Celbridge - the restaurant that is, not my house) and where I ate and enjoyed a number of meals.
The move happened to coincidence with the Pandemic, closing in Celbridge in late February 2020 and only reopening in the Marlin when restaurants reopened for the first time in June that year; and for whatever reason this did not last. The hotel does not currently seem to have a high end restaurant as a replacement.
There is planning permission to extend / add an annexe to the hotel, breaking through to some of the oldest retail buildings in Dublin on Aungier Street, but I'm not sure if this is going ahead. The annexe was proposed to be called The Dolphin, keeping a maritime theme to the naming, and would restore some direly neglected buildings in the process.
A still quite new - opened March 2024 - hotel, this sits right beside the Radisson's Dublin Royal Convention Centre, but is a separate hotel and under separate ownership, linked with S3012 The Grafton Hotel
The bar here is small, but still has a reasonable range of drinks for its size, including Irish independent brewery products. Toilets are buried in the basement and, from memory, more than a little odd - hand dryers fitted to the sinks that resemble bulky taps and automated sliding doors.
It is rather out of the way for most reasons you'd be looking for a pint, but if you're at an event in the aforementioned conference centre, or in Le Pole Square or Dublin Castle it may be worth a visit.
The Inn On The Green bar in the Fitzwilliam Hotel is slightly buried inside it; and as such I had never bothered going in to try find it. However, as unvisited premises in the city centre are getting thin on the ground, I decided to see if I could go in.
On the day of my visit, the actual main entrance to the hotel was undergoing works, so you had to enter through what I suspect is normally a fire exit, or at best a circulation stairwell; which dropped you in to a corridor somewhere to the side of the reception. This did not stop a doorman seeing me and asking what I was looking for - but the outcome was not rejection, but instead instructions on how to find the bar - it is very much open to the public.
And a very snazzy bar it is too, albeit the decor and lack of windows do make it feel like you're drinking on a very fancy cruise ship.
Like some other 5-star hotels in Dublin - the Shelbourne, Marker and Merrion being ones I've experienced this in - there's some free basic bar snacks; albeit the range of drinks is quite limited.
Dublin was exceptionally quiet on the day of my visit, so this bar being even quieter than most is possibly not a regular occurrence, but it may still be a good place to drop in to for a quiet drink when elsewhere is busy. It's certainly away from the main activity outside.
Unlike its stablemate hotel in Kilmainham, there is no sign stating that the bar is Residents Only here at the "Hilton Dublin" as it is simply branded. The Charlemont Bar & Bistro has signage outside and they have always advertised the bar to outsiders, including when it was called the Third Stop - a now dated reference to the Luas stop outside, which is no longer third from the end of the line.
The bar is quite nice by hotel bar standards, and is unlikely to ever be as busy as the nearby S0202 The Barge. Other than The Barge, there is somewhat of a pub desert around here, so this is worth remembering as an option.
Originally built as a Stakis hotel, I *think* this was the first Hilton in Ireland; but I'm not entirely certain of that.
I'm always on the lookout for old guides to Dublin pubs - from any era up until the present, really - as they often contain bits of information that I might not have otherwise landed on; albeit sometimes uncited and extremely untrustworthy (there's a fairly recent guide which has a clanger per page ratio of about 1:1, and that's just the bits I know not to be true.
But when you find a book written by Eamonn Casey, who is still around and operating as a licenced trade historian - despite the National Library having decided that he's dead (those dates are for the disgraced Bishop of the same name!), it should be vastly more trustworthy. Eamonn's stuff all appears to be properly sourced and verifiable.
Eamonn has published two guidebooks to Dublin pubs, one in 1989 and one in 1992. The 1989 version is slightly harder to find in libraries, but was not hard to find second hand; and by virtue of being slightly older I bought this one first - I'll either buy, or go to a library to read, the 1992 one at some point.
Both books were published by "Pelican Marketing Publications" and feature ads from trade suppliers - Guinness, Ballygowan, United Beverages (Guinness's then soft drinks arm), Bank of Ireland, Tilestyle and "A Trust Catering Repair", who seem to have changed names repeatedly and may still exist under one of them. There are also "profiles" of some individuals and companies including Murtagh Properties and the Fitzgerald Group - and in both cases, many of their pubs are featured in the book.
Regardless of the corporate sponsorship, this is a consumer targetted publication.
55 pubs are covered, and despite a 36 year gap between publication and now, most are still trading under their original name. Most have a two page writeup, but the first two have three for some reason; with usually an interior and exterior photo. The exterior photos of a number of pubs feature the same Ford Sierra (with a reg that comes up on check site as being a Transit van somehow), presumably either the authors or an unnammed photographers.
Most writeups have some history of pub - past ownership, licencing history or similar - which makes this invaluable for someone working on any pub history project including any of the pubs covered.
Another reason to read such outdated info as the more review-like bits of the writeups, is that a review from 1989 can show a very different pub to today. 1989 Whelans is described as somewhere to get a good lunch, with much detail of its interior design - and not a single mention of live music!
I'm not really a book reviewer, and nor am I going to just scan in a book that's still available and with a living author, so I'm going to do my usual summary of what the book contains and what has happened to the pubs since. At 48/55 still trading in some form, this has a similar-ish closure rate to the other 1989 pub listing I've previously analysed
I have visited all 48 of these premises that remain open in some form, albeit some are completely transformed by now - rebuilt, converted to a hotel or in a slightly different location!
The pubs featured are:
"Dublin Pubs Southside"
S0253 The Goat, Goatstown
S0314 The Queens, Dalkey
S0298 The Old Punch Bowl, Booterstown
S0251 Sandyford House, Sandyford (visited but writeup not yet published)
The Carraig, Blackrock - now S0292 Wicked Wolf
Martin Morris, Terenure - now S0248 Vaughns Eagle House
S0302 The Purty Kitchen, Dun Laoghaire
S1580 The Rathcoole Inn, Rathcoole
N1121 Palmerstown House, Palmerstown
S0768 The Blue Haven, Rathfarnham
The Clocktower, Kingswood - since completely rebuilt as S2821 Kingswood Lodge
The Earl of Lucan bar, N1133 Spa Hotel, Lucan - now called the Ballyneety Bar
S1510 The Patriots Inn, Kilmainham
S1268 The Sarah Curran, Rathfarnham - closed, most recently the Rathfarnham House.
S0399 The Wishing Well, Blackrock
The Seventh Lock Tavern, Ballyfermot - demolished, most recently the Killeen House
S1328 Ballinteer House, Ballinteer (visited but writeup not yet published)
S1583 An Poitín Stil, Rathcoole
1009200 The Laurels, Clondalkin
"Central Dublin"
O'Dwyers, Mount Street - redeveloped as S0149 Leinster Hotel (writeup reflects its intermediate period as Howl At The Moon)
S0003 Toners, Baggot Street
S2793 Sinnotts, South King Street - this was already the current generation of this in the shopping centre, which had opened the previous year
S0056 The Bailey, Duke Street
The Parnell Mooney - now N1098 Parnell Heritage Pub
Bellamys, Ballsbridge - now 1011804 The Bridge 1859 (but writeup is about Bellamys)
S0240 Slatterys, Rathmines
S0180 Slatterys, Ballsbridge
Caspers, Wicklow Street - now S3271 Marys, sort of (building has had multiple redevelopments)
Bunit & Simpson, Ringsend - now S0158 John Clarkes
S0120 Whelans, Wexford Street
Rathmines Inn, Rathmines - now S0235 Blackbird
Alfie Byrnes, Conrad Hotel, Earlsfort Terrace, now S2747 Terrace Kitchen (writeup is about a different era of it being Alfie Byrnes)
1007394 Davy Byrnes, Duke Street
S0111 The Old Stand, Exchequer Street
Maguires, Pearse Street - demolished, most recently Widow Scallans
S0086 The Palace, Fleet Street
The Harp, D'Olier Street - now S0967 River Bar
"North City"
Dollymount House, Clontarf - demolished
1013257 Gibneys, Malahide
N0152 The Drake Inn, Finglas - long-term closed
The Coast Inn, Skerries (visited but writeup not yet published)
N0149 The Fairview Inn, Fairview - closed, most recently The Players Lounge
N0123 Beaumont House, Beaumont
N0022 Hill 16, Middle Gardiner Street - closed but may reopen shortly.
The Big Tree, Dorset Street - now the bar of N0018 Dublin One Hotel (writeup reflects the Big Tree)
N0169 The Eplhin, Sutton
N0141 Viscount House, Whitehall
N0284 The Harbour Bar, Rush
N0134 Thomas Gaffney, Fairview - both premises were still open at the time, only the larger pub remains
N0146 Cat & Cage, Drumcondra
The Millennium , Swords - completely rebuilt as N1597 Peacocks
N0247 The Boot, Cloghran - currently closed
N0758 Clonsilla Inn, Clonsilla
Sheaf O'Wheat, Coolock - now N0120 Cock & Bull
When I arrived here, the bar wasn't open. It was a weekend afternoon, usually prime time for a hotel bar to be slinging out pints and meals; but instead I was reduced to getting a bottle of beer from the lobby coffee shop. At least the visit wasn't wasted!
This vast hotel, the biggest still operating in Dublin and possibly even the country, has a stored history; including some low points. In the days when most hotels had nightclubs, the then Burlington Hotel's "Club Anabel" was a major attraction, but its name became forever associated with the death of a patron in circumstances that lead to many attempted prosecutions, years of court cases and very little outcome.
To not have an open bar during the day in the biggest hotel in the city is strange enough; even more so for a venue with 50+ years of history as part of Dublin's day-and-nightlife; but the current operators are not known for chasing external trade even if they do still allow it - their other hotels, with limited exceptions, generally have small bars with minimal external advertisement.
Seems my cross-checking of lists wasn't thorough enough, and I did actually miss at least one more pre-2016 visit entirely.
I attended a wedding afters in this hotel, but actually experienced the normal bar also despite there being one in the wedding room - we arrived a bit early, and the main dinner bit was still going on and I think that lurking around the edge while people were eating would be a little weird.
The bar here is, unsurprisingly given the location, rugby branded like some other hotels nearby - The Lineout. My now fading memory was of a hotel guest being slightly miffed as to the limited selection of whiskey on offer, but this was a decade or more ago at this stage and has very possibly changed since.
Small enough update yielding only one useful result
Returned to register:
N0197 former Soup2, North King Street, which I also visited and wrote up as Taproom 47; and is possibly about to become something else, now it's re-registered. Unless it's drastically different again it may not get a third writeup!
The Coolquoy Lodge, in the townland of Coolquoy Common, is the local pub for the residents of Coolquay - the spelling that basically everyone except the authorities and the pub owners use for the area. There isn't an actual quay anywhere nearby, but "quoy" just looks a bit weird in English I guess.
This is quite a generic pub, a roadhouse on the old N2 that is still going after the bypass was built; presumably helped by the local trade which some since failed roadhouse pubs did not have. There's a sizeable bar area and a big restaurant section to the premises; which are well maintained but just a bit, well, bland.
That said, for a village to have a pub at all is no longer guaranteed, let alone one that does food.
A relatively big list this month, as what has been a very effective month for new pub ticks has often left me with long bus waits, or going somewhere to wait for a dinner reservation time to come around
N0099 Big Romance - waiting until it was dinner time to go tick off a pub-restaurant
N1084 Pipers Corner - and then going somewhere after that had more interesting beer
S4500 Brickyard - guts of an hour wait for a bus up to Sandyford Village
1004031 Bison Bar - dinner after a days pub ticking, as the bus home leaves from outside
1016206 Brewdog - another pre dinner wait
S0271 Walters - one hour wait for a bus up Killiney Hill
N1062 Flowing Tide - it was raining and I had a relatively long wait for a Luas that went past Connolly
N0006 Brew Dock - pre-train dinner
S0010 Dawson Lounge - a surprisingly terrible pint
S0080 Bar Rua - while deciding whether to descend in to Lane7
Applewood is an early 00s housing development built around a "main street", with traditional retail units under apartments, and a more traditional pub than the often standalone bar/restaurant building that 00s developments often got - and which has often failed or never opened to begin with.
And indeed if you were told that the punnily named Orchard had been there since the 1960s, once inside, you might find it hard to disagree.
It's a quite traditional pub, with the normal lounge and bar split that's often missing in the newer suburban pubs - and only ladies toilets in the lounge, something that would not be common by the 00s.
There's a solitary craft beer tap, a hazy from Galway Hooker that I'd not seen offered anywhere before; a rare sight in suburbia and a welcome change from products from the two main macros.
All in this seems to be one of the better presented and operated of the modern suburban pubs.
This post is another part of the last barrel-scrape of place I'd missed doing a writeup for; and probably just in time - this will be "promoted" back to just being a RetroReview by virtue of the pub finally reopening, if I ever remember to edit it.
The Cuckoo's Nest is a famed old roadhouse of a pub, sited on the Greenhills Road; and was a regular place for lunches, going away parties and other work events when I worked nearby - albeit lots of people preferred 1009200 The Laurels in Clondalkin for after-work events. I think this was because a lot of them lived nearer and wanted to drive home before drinking.
The pub served the large residential areas of Kilnamanagh and Kingswood as well as the daytime food trade for the large industrial estates around it; and historically operated as a music venue as well.
The pub closed in 2015, with various redevelopment plans afoot; and was set alight in 2016.
Much redevelopment did occur - with apartments, houses and a new Tallaght Theatre built on the lands surrounding the pub (plus the site of the original Tallaght Theatre); and there seemed to be little hope for the pub to reopen, particularly as planning proposals continued to change.
However, the pub is currently undergoing reconstruction, and while an original date of Autumn 2024 has long since sailed past us, it is likely that it will be open by Autumn 2025.
A 90s suburban shopping centre pub that hit one of my triggers for not really liking a pub immediately - there's two gambling machines inside the front door of the bar. Something I last saw in another pub owned by the same people (Graingers - this surname is so common in Dublin pub ownership that not all Graingers are this Graingers; but these two pubs are) come to think of it; and something I really, really don't like.
I've been assured by a local that the lounge is a lot nicer, though.
The final of the Charlie Chawke group of pubs for me to visit - well, in Dublin. I'm no great fan of big pub chains, but I've never had an issue with a Chawke premises; and when I still worked in radio they were great hosts when doing outside broadcasts - for them or more general ones located at their premises.
This premises offers you two quite different options - the main Old Orchard pub, which is quite food focused; and the Paddy Scallys bar; an "old man pub" type setup. This, however, is quite new - having been the pubs off-licence and a wine bar in recent years.
This is where I went first. It's quite well done and had I not heard the barman telling other customers that it was quite new, I may not have landed on this info. The pubs website pushes "kegs directly below the bar" as a selling point here - something that those who apply a more analytical approach to their seeking out pints of Guinness on quality basis may want to check.
I did also head in to the main section as I wanted dinner; and food is not brought in to Paddy Scallys. This met my expectations of food from other Chawke venues, never been disappointed by the quality, although the prices might have been a tad high.
There's also two further restaurants out the back, connected by a covered walkway at the other end of a massive car park; but I'm not sure if these have any connection to the pub.
A nice 60s suburban pub, this gives the feeling of being a pub in a row of shops despite there actually only being one other premises adjoining - an estate agent now, but originally a grocery shop.
There's a traditional interior and traditional service (pints brought to table after settling); and it seems that golf is the sport of choice going on the many social media posts about golf society trips and when major events are being televised.
All told, a very conventional - but nice - suburban pub. I don't really have much more to say about it!
It's been a relatively quiet year for new pub openings, compared to the last few anyway. A clear backlog of premises to open from 2020/21 finally opened after the February 2022 lifting of restrictions on pub service; and the pipeline has got a bit short now.
Indeed, I was very surprised at the lack of places opening for Paddys Day this year, although April has picked up a bit with a few. I document the openings of places elsewhere on the site so I'm not going to go through details other than what the purpose of this post is.
Something is quite baffling in that a huge proportion of the new venues opening - and with two exceptions they are actually *new* venues and not reopenings - are effectively activity centres for adults.
As of the time I write this, there are six premises open that match this requirement. Only three of them have turned up on the liquor licence register but I'm fairly confident that all of them are licenced as pubs - it just isn't practical to operate the way they are any other way.
First off we have places that are specific to one sport/game that you can play on the premises, but where you can also drink.
We have two bowling alley / arcade setups, from the British chain Lane7. These are like tiny Leisureplexs, but three times the price. And with a bar - which you do not need to pay for a lane to go in to. I have visited one, on Clarendon Row; and will have to tick off the second branch in Dundrum also, which I believe is larger; and had been intended to be a Press Up branded bowling alley originally.
There is then Flight Club, which is darts based, in the former S3727 Sams Bar. This offers "social darts" which is, as far as I can tell, just darts as you'd play it in any normal pub, but with bookings. You can, again, just go in to the bar without booking. I visited as Sams and I'm terrible at darts, so I won't be back.
The next category is VR based "experiences". One of these is still sports based - 1021725 Pitch - a virtual golf setup where you swing at a screen rather than on actual grass. You can again just go to the bar here.
We then have Sandbox VR, a VR headset setup that looks somewhat terrifying; and has a robot cocktail 'bartender' which you can, again, just head in to get a drink from without paying a minimum of €30 for a VR trip.
The final category of those that are open is "a mix of all of the above". The former Icon Centre at Leopardstown Racecourse has finally reopened as 1021852 Super Social, which has darts, indoor golf (which looks to use real balls), shuffleboard and other activities. The website says you can come in without a booking for activities but I suspect you may be rather encouraged to get a meal rather than just drinks. Super Social is open in the afternoon for under-18s, not common with this type of venue it seems.
Yet to come is a branch of Bounce, a boozy ping pong setup that already exists in the UK. I have no idea whether they'll let you in to their branch in the old Central Bank, when it opens, without a booking as it hasn't opened yet - and their UK website is incredibly opaque about whether they allow it there.
A pub that many people will know bits of by sight, passing it at 100km/h - this is the pink pub you can see from the M50, south of junction 11.
The pub has been there for a lot longer than the motorway has (the current ownership dates to the 1840s), and was once on the Dublin to Brittas road, which now crosses the M50 and hence passes the pub at height. These new roads mean the pub looks rather out of place, sited at an angle to everything else around it, and somewhat shoved in a corner. The "front" of the pub now addresses a park rather than a road; and the entrance from the car park to the lounge seems to suffice as a main entrance instead.
This review has sat scheduled for today, but still at draft status for ages, as I'm not sure my visit really gave me enough time to get a good handle on the place. It's a bit of a walk from the nearest bus stop on the now bypassing road, and this cut my time between buses down to pretty close to the time required to knock a pint rather than have a look around.
The building presents as an incredibly 60s/70s pub - mansard roof, weird tower - but I suspect the core building is very old. The walls inside are decorated with old photographs and signage and there's quite a lot to look at, which I didn't get to fully take in.
It's not old and it's not a mill; but it's on the site of an old pub and has bits of an old mill in it...
This late 90s Fitzgerald Group drinking barn was built on the site of Bridget Burkes, an old and well known drinking establishment in the area. Referencing back to the Tallaght local historian Albert Perris again, the mill fittings inside were apparently purchased from Borrisokane in Tipperary - where my mothers family come from and where they actually had a pub until the 1920s.
The pub structure is a pastiche of an actual old mill building; and there were *paper* mills along the Dodder nearby; but the entire lot is from 1998.
Inside, it's a standard suburban Fitzgerald pub, in decent nick which suggests the rolling refurbs that the group seem to do must have rolled through semi recently.
