Saturday, 26 April 2025

RetroReview: S0398 Dunnes Stores Blackrock (as TGI Fridays)

Another from the "making sure everything marked off is written up" challenge; this is one of the stranger premises to have to write up.

It's a supermarket, or more realisticially a big convenience store - a store format Dunnes are beginning to roll out, and indeed now have two of that are using pub licences. This one I managed to tick off by visiting it when it was a pub-licenced restaurant.

Once the most expensive pub in Dublin - the pub, not the prices, though it was probably up there - this was best known as The Playwright, run by the Moran Hotel group and particularly popular as a nightlife destination in the early days of late bars. It had a run of wins of the Dublin and eventually National Superpub of the Year in the Black & White Pub Awards, which were taken quite seriously by the press in a way that more recent pub awards have not quite been.

In 2004, it was sold for €8.1m as part of a sell off of various assets by Morans. The bulk of the pub was rapidly converted to a TGI Fridays, which was open by early 2005; but there was also a Dante's Italian (a now defunct sister chain, in Ireland, to TGI Fridays) on site; and some element of remaining bar where you were not expected to eat.

This closed in around 2010 - its quite hard to track down exact dates for crash era closures, there being so many occurring - and the unit lay empty until Dunnes purchased it in about 2018.

While still recognisably an old pub, the thatched roof has been replaced by slates; and an extension built over the "courtyard" smoking area and (leaky, on my visit) glass-roofed entrance lobby that existed in its pub era.

As a TGI Fridays, it put me off the brand forever - I think I may have gone to some abroad when the brand was still owned by Radisson Hotels, to get loyalty points and nothing more; and my reviews of the other TGI Fridays in Dublin (of which only two remain) are not glowing - the chain reaching 7 branches for a time is not a good reflection on Ireland in the mid 00s!

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