Large amount of changes to the file but only three of substance here:
Additions (or maybe renumberings!):
1017978 The Traders, Greenhills Shopping Centre - reconstructed pub formerly 1001214
1018129 The Wren Hotel, Andrews Lane - replaced Andrews Lane Theatre 1009202
Removals:
1007885 Jam Park, Airside Swords - this may reappear
Completionism requires me to visit many hotel bars. In this case, I get a grand old hotel with an apparently storied bar - named after a famed guest - but the end result to the drinker is no different to any other non city centre hotel, really.
Dun Laoghaire's current harbour walls began construction in the the late 1810s, and its importance as a secondary harbour to Dublin itself began then; resulting in the growth of the town and the construction of many hotels. The Royal Marine's predecessor dates to 1828 and would have been built for this trade; with the existing hotel dating to 1865. This redevelopment was connected to the second major development of Dun Laoghaire - the railway - which by then had been serving the town for over 30 years.
The 1863-1865 redevelopment was by William Dargan, the railway engineer, and possibly contributed to his financial failure - although he also invested in flax agriculture which ended in failure and certainly didn't help.
Anyway, on to the bar. Hardys is signed from Georges Street, but this entrance was locked and I had to enter via the main entrance, and then find where the bar was - it is not well signed internally.
Its very much set up for food - restaurant tables and so on - but this may be a facet of current COVID restrictions requiring spacing, having table capacity limits and table service only. I was here for lunch anyway, although I was also intending to read the paper and a restaurant table is quite unsuited for this.
The food I ordered was.... fine. Well, edible. Soup was exceptionally bland and the burger, while actually pretty good, did not actually resemble the description on the menu - and neither were particularly cheap. The drinks selection is very generic and fairly poor.
I'd suggest you leave this bar to the hotel residents; there are better bars in Dun Laoghaire even with the constant turnover - in the five and a half years I've been doing this blog, there has always been at least one pub in the town centre closed down!
Another licence update with virtually nothing in it.
Renumbered:
1017749 - Spencer Hotel, IFSC - formerly N2169
I'm fairly sure you can go in here without having to be "dressed nice". But I do suspect that being dressed nearly identically to the maitre'd (albeit without the benefit of being Italian, or thinner) probably helped in terms of there being a table available on a busy Saturday lunchtime, considering this is the public bar of a 5* hotel.
However, once inside, it isn't particularly pretentious - the food menu is quite normal, and not even in the faux-home cooking way of somewhere like The Ivy; the drinks on offer are totally normal and the clientele are normal people, but wearing button down shirts.
Food was fine, glass of wine I bought to fit in was fine, pint I had after that when I realised everyone else was drinking pints was fine. Price wasn't absolutely obscene.
Another place I've yet to visit was completely full with a ~1h wait for tables - and people willing to take the wait - so this could be a decent option if you want a nicer lunch and other places are busy. And you don't feel like going to the other place that's extremely quiet.
This is my 600th-the-second-time-around pub to visit (DG0492 The Gladstone being the first time). Due to the way I use a floating list of licenced premises, and the significant number of licences that lapsed off the list in the last year, I ended up dropping well below 600 again. I would hope a few of those licence re-appear and boost me towards 650/700.
A return to a more normal level of socialising, not due to a change in restrictions but due to physio on my knee giving me more normal mobility for my age!
This is also beginning to reflect that there are sod all pubs left in the city centre that I haven't already been to.
S2119 Captain Americas Grafton Street
N1224 Madigans O'Connell Street
The last outlier for me on Dawson Street, the usual presence of a bouncer in the door here sets off one of my dislikes about pub - having to pass someone to get in - so it ended up becoming the last visited for that reason. Of course, now you have to sign in with someone to get in to a pub; so it doesn't really matter - but the bouncer wasn't on yet when I arrived anyway.
A branch of the NolaClan/House group, this was a bar and restaurant in normal times but is currently only operating as a bar. I hadn't realised this, and had signed in / been seated before it became apparent - so pints were followed by a trip to Burger King on Grafton Street instead. I suspect this isn't the plan for the future, but the premises has only recently reopened after Lockdown closures.
This isn't my type of pub, but that means its probably perfectly tuned for those who it does suit - a design heavy cocktail bar in the city centre has a specific audience, and I'm not it. List tick obtained, and I would go back if I had a reason to.
This bar originally opened in the mid 2000s as "Ron Blacks". This incarnation closed in ~2010 and reopened as 37 Dawson Street in 2012; but Ron Black - who I don't think owned this pub - continued working in 37 in the whiskey bar until 2018.
Ron Black was however the owner of S0010 Dawson Lounge, Dublin's smallest pub a few doors up, a pub which many people still call Ron Blacks.
Edit: It appears that this premises was opened by the Thomas Read Group, who at that stage also owned the Dawson Lounge. It was sold by their receiver to become a branch of the Gaucho restaurant chain - which didn't happen.
"Hot white walls, black shadows, the aroma of strange Eastern spices" - or so began the text written on the front of the Zanzibar nightclub / cafe bar which formerly occupied the quayside portion of the site of this hotel.
Opened in 1998 with a then groundbreaking (for Dublin) interior, Zanzibar survived until the crash, and then had a short afterlife as a "beach club" nightclub. Dublin's night-time temperatures being absolutely perfect for beach attire, as we all know!
The building then sat derelict for quite some time, before being stripped back to its facade, and a substantial branch of the Locke Living hotel chain built between it and the Lotts behind.
During much of the early stage of construction, the name given for this hotel was to be the Ormond Locke; but either potential confusion with the forever-delayed Ormond Hotel rebuild down the road, or a decision that the Zanzibar name was more interesting lead to opening as the Zanzibar Locke. The hotel opened in December 2020, having only days of public service before the country returned to lockdown, so my visit wasn't really that late after reopening.
The public bar element of it is a stylishly designed, spirit-led bar and restaurant called Baraza. It is relatively low-lit, but not sufficient to cause black shadows; and my whiskey didn't smell particularly Eastern, so it's probably for the best that the old inscription is gone.
A limited selection of beers is offered along with the cocktails and spirits, but its very much more of a post-dinner drink type of place than a hotel-with-a-pub like some other city centre hotels.
