1017882 IMC Cinema Santry

Another cinema, part of the same chain as my other recent visit, but without anywhere near the history of the Savoy. 

And it was another surprisingly cheap pint, of Heineken - the only beer they offer. 

There is a tiny bit of history here, though. The cinema itself is an early 90s multiplex, minimally modified but that has been kept in serviceable condition; however that alone isn't particularly interesting. 

The previous use of the site, as McCairns Motors Vauxhall and Chevrolet assembly plant is more interesting, at least to me. I have been in to the admin areas of the centre in a previous job, and there is a photo of the media launch of the shopping centre development in the early 90s, with a helicopter dropping someone off in the ruins of the car plant.

There's also a quirk with it's name. As the cinema element of the Omni Park shopping centre, this was the cinema that gave the Omniplex chain it's name - but it isn't part of that chain. IMC and Omniplex were two seperate chains that mostly operated as one - Ward Anderson - but split over ten years ago, and despite this being the source of the Omniplex name; that name went to the other side of the split. 

S0259 The Willows

Just when I'd announced I'd finished all the "normal" pubs in the county, it gets revealed that one recent enough closure that I'd just missed - it shut before I did a sweep-up of that bit of suburbia - was to reopen on the August Bank Holiday weekend.

I didn't make it out that weekend - I was elsewhere in the country; but I did the weekend after. 

This is another Irish "estate pub", an entirely different idea to that in the UK - a pub in a small row of shops in a housing estate; often these days not containing any conventional shops at all. Streetview history shows that the normal shop here closed some time between 2014 and 2018. 

Most of these pubs were built in the 1940s to 60s, this coming from the latter end of that period by the looks of things, but it has been extensively updated - I wouldn't say "modernised", as that would imply a loss of character - before its recent reopening.

The food offering, at least initially, extends to toasties; and the drinks offering has some Four Provinces to break up the monotony of Diageo and Heineken products. I expect more food may be offered here going forward.

The pub isn't too far from Dundrum village and the Luas stops there; but there isn't another pub for quite some distance in all other directions, so there should be catchment here to keep it going.

1001687 Smock Alley Theatre

One of the newest, and also oldest, theatres in the city centre; Smock Alley opened in 2012 in what had been, for my generation at least, the Statoil Dublin Viking Experience. (That attraction is not to be confused with the still operating Dublinia)

However, that was just a temporary cultural use of the building, which had formerly been a Catholic church - apparently the first obvious one within the city for centuries, as it opened pre-emancipation. And this church had been built on the site of, and retaining various features from, the 1735 Theatre Royal.

That theatre itself had replaced a 1662 building on the same site, and a little of the fabric of that building appears to still survive. I don't believe there's another operating theatre in Dublin that can claim, even tenuously, to have that length of history - but this really isn't my specialist subject.

What there is now is a complex with a number of relatively small rooms, including a banquet hall above the main stage. It's here that I had my drinks; as there was an option to purchase charcuterie prior to a show, in what have to be some of the most impressive surroundings of anywhere you can actually get a drink in Dublin. 

But you do have to go see something being performed here to get a drink, either in the banquet hall or the small bar in the lobby. I saw a modern, Dublin-set interpretation of Moliere's Misanthrope; an interesting experience for someone who last attended a theatrical performance in the early 2000s! 

1013760 Savoy Cinema

Once a grand, nearly 3000 capacity single screen cinema, the Savoy has been chopped up so much over its nearly 100-year history (opening in 1929) that there are now THIRTEEN screens in the building.

I watched a documentary, on my own, in Screen 12 - which I'd swear is what the ladies toilets for the main screen used to be - with what was actually a fairly reasonably priced pint, of the only beer they serve - Moretti. 

I wanted to see the documentary anyway, and the screen was cooler than the air outside, so I got a comfortable enough visit to tick the place off.

This limited beer or wine offering isn't all the Savoy has ever had, pub-wise though. The adjacent branch of Madigans was once the cinemas bar (and also the first pub on O'Connell Street in the modern era - there's still only three other than the hotel bars, which isn't a lot) but eventually separated in operation and ownership and trades entirely independently and on its own licence.

1022390 CitizenM Hotel, Bride Street

Bride Street was once lined with pubs - eight by my count, and another 3 on Werburgh Street which continues directly from it. Of those, one one of the Werburgh Street pubs - the famed Lord Edward - still exists.

But as part of the recent redevelopment of the area, Bride Street now has two hotels. One, a StayCity, only has a residents bar - licenced as such and out of scope for me. The other, the new CitizenM, has a conventional bar open to the public.

Or at least it does by the time you're reading this. On the day I visited, they had not yet got their full Publicans Licence (Ordinary) Hotel in place and were only able to serve wine and soft drinks. But a wine is a wine, I was in the bar and I'm counting it against the full licence they were expecting to have by the end of July. I think the hotel opened a bit earlier than was originally advertised so this may explain the period of no full licence.

The bar is a hotel lobby bar, but a fairly nicely fitted out one. With no beers actually yet on offer, I can't comment on what the beer selection is like; and I know next to nothing about wine either, but I was able to drink what I bought!

DG0499 Stoop Your Head

Two weeks or so ago, my writeup of the Yacht in Loughshinny caled it the last - last open and trading at that time, anyway - very conventional pub in the county for me to visit. This visit is the last place that vaguely looks and feels like a pub; with everything else being at best a hotel lobby bar. It's 927th on my rolling register basis, so not a nice round number; but very significant all the same. I still have 30-something pub-licenced premises of less obvious pub character to visit, and new places do still open - but we are approaching the end. Anyway: on to the writeup.

Probably one of the oddest named pubs in the entire country, this premises claims to have been the first gastropub in Ireland, opening as such in 1959, in what had been Duffy's pub  (a rarely, but sometimes, seen pub name despite how common my surname actually is).

Last time I tried to go in here, I was denied service because I didn't want food - but this was during the late 2021 pub opening period, with all its paperwork and reasons why somewhere might want to keep their limited seats for diners. I was instead told that the neighbouring, and co-owned since that 1959 reopening, DG0500 Joe Mays would serve me if I didn't want to eat.

The issue there was I had just had lunch. In Joe Mays. Oh well. 

This time I was advised that eating in might be required if the pub was busy, so I arrived hungry. The food options here are mostly seafood based - this could easily be the only food focused pub in Ireland that doesn't offer a beef burger. Despite my fishing industry parental family background; my food choices tend towards the generations of retail butchers that my mother is descended from, but cod basically taste of nothing. The over-branded fish and chips ("Fresh Cod Fritté") was perfectly to my expectations; and I was able to down it with a pint of O'Haras. My drinking partner for the day was happy with his moules frites, even with the baseline of having much experience of eating them in France!

While I was there, there were people just in for drinks, so I probably didn't *have* to have food here, but I don't regret doing so. From past experience, Skerries pubs and food don't often mix, and I did need to have lunch somewhere.

As for the name - it's not explained on the website. There is a low doorway inside the pub which has the pubs name repeated on a warning sign above. But my immediate thought was of a command to duck before a sail boom goes around while tacking in a sail boat, of which there are plenty outside in Skerries Harbour. Locally, and when referred to on its own website, it is "Stoops" rather than the full name. Despite this, I don't believe it has any particular SDLP connection...

1022267 Priory Market

Dublin's first example of a European indoor food market - or, arguably, first in the almost a decade since the Epicurian Food Hall was converted to a giant Dealz - is somewhat strangely located in an industrial estate in Tallaght village, a reasonable distance away from the high frequency bus routes and tram line that serve the Tallaght area. But it's worth the walk.

This is because it is co-sited with, and run by, Priory Brewing who were already there. A social enterprise, Priory has been around for a few years, but I believe did go in to a hiatus for a period before returning recently.

In the corner of the market that is beside the brewery, Priory have their bar. The offering here is four bright tanks of their four main beers - a pale, an IPA, a session IPA and a lager, albeit the lager was sold out when I visited - as well as keg offerings of the rest of their lineup (on the day of my visit, this was a weiss, a double IPA, a red, a sour, a stout and possibly more) and some other Irish independent guest beers. 

There's also a cocktail bar, a significant source of the long queues that were at the bar at times while I was there - they were not a permanent fixture, as the number of staff behind the bar would increase to reduce the queues when needed.

I'd had lunch just before getting on the bus to head out here, so I didn't actually try any of the food options. The longest queues, by far, were at the ice cream vendor - but it was mid 20 degrees outside, so this is understandable; but plenty of the others seemed fairly busy too.

I'll head back though, and try get some food on that visit. Now to lobby the NTA for more buses... 

S3556 Sugar Club

Why did a semi-state sugar processing and canned foods company need a private theatre? Whatever the reason for it, the mid 1960s headquarters of the Irish Sugar Company was built with a theatre in the basement. There were other corporate theatres in Dublin at the time - Guinness's Rupert Guinness Theatre; and the Players Theatre at the John Player factory on the South Circular - so it may have been due to this. 

The Irish Sugar Company had commissioned a borderline agrarian propaganda movie about sugar beet production in the early 60s, but I don't think they'd need to retain a private cinema just to show this!

When opened, the venue was dubbed the Erin Foods Theatre - Erin being the canning arm of Irish Sugar, and was used for various events over the years; but it was more commonly known as the International Cinema, which operated there, non-exclusively, from around 1967.

It then became - exclusively, this time - the Arts Council's Irish Film Theatre from 1977 to 1984, the venue then lay empty until 1999 when it reopened as the Sugar Club; initially a regular nightclub but now a venue for music and comedy performances, club nights and occasional use as a cinema. And it was one of those nights that I went to tick it off.

While there are occasional, but rare, club nights here; the interior is set up more for cinema or theatre performances, with tiered seating - that has tables. There isn't really a dance floor, as such - although that didn't stop a number of people dancing during the concert movie I was watching. They also do food, specifically pizza, delivered to your seat, not a very common feature of a club style space! 

I am worried for the future of this venue, as the building was up for sale in 2022 and, as a ~60 year old office building, is likely to be a redevelopment target. Planning consent for redevelopment of cultural spaces sometimes includes requirements for replacements; but these replacements are rarely as useful and even more rarely successful. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

1019413 Mama Yo

I didn't manage to finish off the various elements of Press Up before the entire entity basically ceased to be, but I got there in the end. At least until Eclectic open somewhere entirely new, that is.

This is a deceptively large - the single shop unit width at the front opens out hugely behind - very generic and very expensive Chinese restaurant, that really does not need to hold a pub licence for the way it serves drinks.

I don't recommend going here unless you have a good reason to, as there's better alternatives on the same section of street let alone elsewhere in the city.

Revenue licence numbers - what do they actually mean?

Across this site, and the map, and my own records I make use of Revenue's licence numbers to keep track of what is and isn't a qualifying pub. They are matters of public record and also used in the CC-BY licenced register so there shouldn't be any issues with this; and I can't think of any other system for it. But its not instantly clear how it works to outsiders, and even ten years in this is somewhat of a guess!

Systems:

There are two different numbering systems in use by Revenue:

* Alphanumeric registration for liquor licences alone, issued by licencing court district, used until (approximately) late 2007 

* Sequential numeric National system used since late 2007 - which is used for all excise licences

Alphanumeric

The alphanumeric system appears to have been introduced in the 1970s and applied to existing premises in a roughly geographical basis. You will see sequential numbers for pubs in a single area of the city, and occasionally a "missing tooth" of a number where a pub has closed down, or has been re-numbered for some reason.

There are five legacy areas that have, or had, alphanumeric licences in Dublin - Northside, Southside, Drogheda, Meath (Trim, presumably) and Arklow. There are a significant number of NXXXX and an even higher number of SXXXX licences for the first two, a handful of DgXXXX licences for Drogheda, one for Meath and formerly one for Arklow - these are MhpXXXX and ArpXXXX - the p standing for pub. The solitary Dublin-located yet Arklow licenced pub - Arp0667 Blue Gardenia - has permanently closed.

Clearly the districts do not strictly cover county boundaries - while the Mhp and Arp pubs are very close to the border, the Dg district comes as far south as Loughshinny. The N and S division also does not respect the Liffey, or the postcode even/odd split, with plenty of "Northside" pubs to the south of "Southside" ones out to the West of the city. This, I imagine, covers older district and circuit court boundaries, many of which have been minorly altered over the years as court houses close or other changes are made - and this may have in part lead to the replacement of the old system.

Non-retail types of licences such as restaurant, wholesaler and manufacturers also used this system; with suffices relating to their licence type added to N and S licence numbers, and the "p" for pub swapped out for the same letters in other areas. Bafflingly, their un-suffixed numbers can collide -  S0012 is a pub and S0012SR an unconnected restaurant a number of streets away

Sequential

The national/sequential system gives no indication of where a pub is, but it can sometimes be used to infer when it first opened by comparing to the age of pubs with nearby numbers above or below it.

There are huge gaps in the numbering at times - as this system is used for all excise licences of all types. 1000064 is a pub in Dublin, but 1000065 is the road fuel excise licence for a petrol station in Mayo, for instance. In particular, as entire classes of excise licence have been registered, blocks of numbers have been used at once - much of the 1003/4/5xx blocks are marked fuel (green diesel etc) licences.

I had assumed that these numbers started at 1000000, but a 6 digit number starting with 9 has appeared in some previous registers - this may be a solitary error, and it isn't currently there either.

Renumbering

A licence number is for life, not just for a specific operators time in a pub... except when it isn't. Every year a reasonable handful of premises change licence number.

I can't tell for certain what the rules are for a new number being issued; as some cases of extremely long closure have led to the old number being kept, but I suspect it has to do with redefining the licenced area of a pub - generally if a premises undergoes works which alter this, the number is changed - but this doesn't seem to be consistent. Two pubs near me out in Kildare which have had huge reductions in floor area - conversion of nightclub/function room areas to flats - still have their old system numbers.

A change of licence *type* will usually cause the number to change also, but not if it is a a Hotel (Residents) to Hotel (Ordinary) - a small number of these have appeared with their old number intact, including one where it was on the old system

1018497 Six by Nico

A branch of a chain of restaurants, Six by Nico operates on a slightly odd gimmick - all they offer is a six course tasting menu, which changes every six weeks.

A week or so before we visited here, I had been in Vigo and had had a tasting menu at a 1* Michelin restaurant. With wine parings and a few small extras, I left that restaurant very nearly €300 lighter.

And I preferred what I got in the gimmicky, Scottish chain place for less money in a much dearer city. But I do point out that I'm no restaurant reviewer.

You can't just come in here for drinks, but the pub licence is well used - there's an actual bar, with a cocktail barman; an option for cocktail parings for the six courses that looks dangerously boozy and is fairly reasonably priced; and some Irish independent beer offerings - I can't remember the brewery specified on the menu, but it was unavailable that evening, with Heaney offered in its place.

I may well go back here, if a future menu looks interesting.

August 2025 Register update

After many months of basically nothing, we get a reasonable update this month - all already visited!

New: 

1021935 Lane7, Dundrum Shopping Centre
1022058 Sandbox VR, Nassau Street
1022267 Priory Market, Tallaght (writeup scheduled for next week)

Renumbered:

1022218 Mercantile Hotel, Dame Street - formerly S3175

N1776 St Margaret's Golf & Country Club

Now, this tick absolutely needed a driver - the clubhouse here is 1.6km from the nearest bus stop, which itself does not get a particularly frequent bus service. It is possibly the last tick I'll do with a driver - or at least, the last on a multi tick trip.

I'm not quite sure how this is a "country club" - the facilities appear to be golf, a public restaurant/bar, and some conferencing facilities. But they do use the term across their branding.

The bar itself felt like a members bar somewhere, but is absolutely open to the public. Prices are a bit closer to what you might expect in a members bar, but I doubt many people come here to drink, due to that extremely long walk in from St Margarets village

N2410 Roganstown Hotel & Country Club

Another possibly not actually inaccessible without a car premises - there are ten buses a day, seven days a week from Swords or Balbriggan - this was sort-of on the way to somewhere truly inaccessible and would have taken probably five to six hours round trip to tick on its own, so it was done with a driver regardless.

A fine Georgian house restoration with two golf courses and a leisure centre, the term Country Club is fairly accurate here, when it is often a stretch elsewhere. The bar is a large room, with dark wood and relatively ornate decoration - and notably, not a television in sight as far as I could see.

The range of draught beer here was not interesting, but they actually have some Irish independent products in bottle - once sort of common in the earlier days of independent breweries getting in to bars, but now rarely enough seen. My Galway Bay Full Sail was delivered with a branded half pint glass, and was a fairly fresh bottle, going from the best before date.

Revisited pubs July 2025

N0053 Graingers - now the Connolly bar is gone, Graingers suffices for the quick inter-train pint

DG0492 The Gladstone

DG0497 The Snug

DG0495 Nealons - these three were all part of a day trip to Skerries to

S1465 Dudleys

S1468 Thomas House - and these two a Sunday wander around D8

S0106 The Porterhouse - escaping the tourists in Temple Bar on the way to another tick

DG0503 The Yacht, Loughshinny

At the time of scheduling this post, it's set to go out on the first of August; and is going to be the last post on an increased six day a week schedule. 

I'm not going to revert to the five or even four day a week schedules I've had for much of 2025, but crash straight back to the long held three day schedule - Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 

Those days will be 'reserved' as such for writeups; with any other posts done on other days - because at the time of writing I have all of three visits in my backlog to write up, two visits scheduled to happen within a few hours of writing and then less than 40 more places left to go. So my backlog is gone, basically; and I'd like to actually have some posts for the rest of the month...

But back to the actual pub writeup. I am calling this my "last traditional pub" visit; as everything else left to go is either a pub-restaurant, a hotel, a theatre or a strip club (which I'm still trying to figure a justification for not going to). The Yacht isn't an incredibly old pub, having been opened in 1960 as a single storey, flat roof extension to the building housing the owners grocery store.

Old photos inside the pub show that it has been extended and modified over the years, in to a much larger, fully two storey - but still flat roofed pub. You can disregard stereotypical British opinions of flat roofed pubs (as criticised in this article) when in Ireland, and indeed this isn't on an estate anyway!

Indeed, the pub is in a small village; and various reasons led to its closure in 2006. The son of the original owner bought it back in 2012, reopened it and has operated it since, and there was a reasonable volume of customers when we dropped in. 

I did this with a driver as I assumed it was basically inaccessible otherwise - however, the 33/33a buses stop basically outside the door. Parking really isn't great, so the bus may have been a better option.

1021424 Blue Bar

A surprisingly, well, gigantic premises on the way out to Red Island in Skerries; this used to be "Blue Café Bar", and the food service still seems to be a major element here - we were asked if we wanted menus at least five times during a fairly quick visit!

This was done with a driver; not that it really needed to be - but the pub we were intending to go to next (and did) opened later we expected it to; so rather than leave it un-done (it is not the most accessible without a driver, albeit it does have buses), we came here to grab an unexpected extra tick.

Sun generates crowds in Skerries, but Blue Bar was less busy than the other seaside bars slightly closer to the town centre, albeit possibly just because there's far more space here. You can pick between outdoor seating, or all various types of pub seating options inside. 

We ended up at the bar, slightly mystified looking at the more unusual cocktail ingredients/garnishes they had on display or were prepping for the evening. There's a reasonable range of draft beers here, as well as their extensive cocktail options. Checking to try find when the Cafe bit of the name was dropped - unsuccessfully - found many people raving about their chicken wings. I do not eat chicken wings, or realistically any meat on the bone; and my driver is vegetarian, so this wasn't much use to us - but as I know the popularity of wings, it's worth mentioning when somewhere is reputed for them!