1010310 Napper Tandys

I find this recently renamed pub's name to be a potential cause of confusion. There was a very long standing pub of the same name on Bride Street, which was demolished for apartments in 1999 - and has not, as yet, been redeveloped. Additionally, there was a pub of this name in the successful Dublin-set RTE series Love/Hate.

The operators of this premises have settled on this name regardless of, or possibly even due to, these other pubs - fictional and former.

This was until recently Marcels restaurant and bar (the bar being briefly called Chambers), but the entire site is now Napper Tandys. It is still operating primarily as a food venue, with those there solely to drink directed towards bar seating rather than the tables. Its OK as a bar but suspect it could get extremely crowded if they maintain the seating rules.

S0002 Doheny & Nesbitts

This pub has strong political and economics connections, quite specifically to the early days of Progressive Democrats party and people involved with it at that time. To that end, an area of the upstairs was reserved on the evening of my visit for a private party held by Tom Parlon, one-term PD TD and head of the Construction Federation of Ireland.

Its a nice looking pub, but that's about all I think it has going for it. Otherwise it was an all-round reminder of an era of the past I'd prefer we don't go back to, although it seems we are. Loud, obnoxious middle-aged men made up much of the crowd here, relatively early in the evening for that too. There's drink perching shelves in the corridors towards the toilets, showing how crammed it can get. People sit and stand in front of the bars, completely unaware that someone may actually want to order a drink.

This was pub #400 for me, well, #400 on the floating timeline of what is open. Its actually more like #410 when closed down premises are added or #420 if you added in premises that used to have pub & theatre licences seperately. I had actually intended somewhere else in the area as #400 but it didn't seem like a suitable night - it may be #500 or I'll never mention it again.

S0028 Foleys

This premises operates as two partially seperated "pubs", Foleys and Reillys. Foleys was the specific side I visited.

A rather underwhelming range of drinks - limited in range but not in price - and poor, expensive food were what awaited me. I've recently talked about a fantastic steak sandwich in a Dublin pub - this was basically the opposite. Gristly and overdone, it had to be removed from the bread to be cut, at least for anyone with human rather than animal teeth.

There's a relatively high density of pubs around here, and its becomes increasingly clear over the next few reviews that I don't really like any of them. This wasn't the worst, but with such poor rivals that isn't actually a good thing.

S0056 The Bailey

This relatively food- (and these days tourist-) oriented pub on Duke Street was one of a few glaring misses among the long-established city centre pubs for me. A relatively narrow and long pub, the sort-of heated outdoor seating area probably has as much capacity as the entire indoors does.

There's a few things of interest here in what is other a relatively generic - but perfectly fine - pub. One is that they had matchbooks, something rarely seen in Ireland since the 2004 smoking ban. One was acquired for my small collection of pub bits, to be placed alongside a token and bag from Token and a toothpick book from The Legal Eagle.

The other is something historical. For many years, the pub had a basically inexplicable statue of a sailor with a sextant on the wall, but this has since gone missing

1002785 The Malt / The Malthouse

This pub has a slightly different name on its outside sign than on all its internal signage, which is at least a bit confusing.

It also smelled of vomit and there was a couple having a very public, very detailed argument about presents they'd bought for each other. That sort of set the mood and I left after I finished my pint as I didn't really want to hang around. Ticked off the list. I headed around the corner to Harkins for food and decent conversation instead.

I'm now up to date with pubs, this being #397 on the current register - if anyone is trying to keep track by reviews they may notice that there is usually not 50 between "landmark" round number, due entirely to visited pubs being removed or occasionally readded to the register; and the even rarer occasion of realising I had never marked a pub off the map - which has happened twice recently with N0081 Tolka House and S0185 O'Briens which I had been in about 8 and 10 years ago respectively. So the numbers are celebratory at best but I still try to mention them.

#400 should happen before year-end, which is quite an achievement with #300 in February and #350 only in September. This has been heavily assisted by a few research-and-bagging days which will likely not be repeated as frequently in 2019, mainly as I'm nearly over that specific stage of research.

S1465 Bakers

I initially got the impression that this pub had fallen to tourist trade - being relatively near to Guinness and on the main route back in - but a quick look at their Facebook page shows regulars and community involvement that can only come from having proper locals trade. So it was just a facet of being there on a weekday afternoon that meant it was mostly tourists there.

I should probably have gone in to the bar, as there isn't a lot to say about the lounge. Its decorated with the fairly common setup of probably-repro drinks signage, with some sporting elements added in including a set of well-thumbed sports biographies on the upper mezzanine level. The food looked decent but I didn't partake; the drink was fine - being all macro I went for my current and probably from-now-on choice of Smithwicks, proving that I am in fact turning in to my grandfather. At least I hope I am, as he managed to retain about as much hairline as I have now until he was 89!

S1467 Tom Kennedys

The most surprising element of this quite traditional city centre pub was that they had Beamish on tap, so close to Guinness and all its tourist market - and whatever, if anything, remains of the loyal staff base. As I was heading to a work event in the Guinness Storehouse I decided to partake in a pint of Beamish as the likely only non-Diageo product of the evening.

This is quite a decent pub although there's not really a lot to say about it. I'd imagine it gets quite busy before and after Vicar Street gigs - oddly, while I have been to multiple gigs there, they have nearly always been with someone who was not drinking and driving back for some reason so I have never been in before. Interestingly, on the walls among the photos of old Dublin, they have a print of this photo of the pub which sat opposite Vicar Street and sacrificed its licence to it.