1003994 TGI Fridays Westmoreland Street

Part one of a two part wallet-emptying, this finished off a set of what was seven TGI Friday licences - but with only two trading right now, one long gone (although present - its now a Dunnes Stores off-licence), one further closed, and one up for sale - may have been a lot of wasted effort.

Situated in the former Bewleys on Fleet Street, which was briefly a Starbucks in a horrific circle-closing of some kind, this is a vast premises and, when I visited, nearly empty. The came could not be said for nearly every other food serving venue in the city, as it was an exceptionally busy day - beautiful weather for late September, pay day weekend for many and so on. You can take a guess as to why when you see the price of the food.

Its a TGI Fridays, so you get the same as everywhere else - overpriced food, slightly overpriced drinks, muted sports on TV and eye-assualting decor. And after consuming all that, a hefty bill with a 5% service charge - probably the only 'casual dining' chain in Ireland to do this for small groups or solo diners. 

My bill for lunch and two pints plus service was FORTY SEVEN quid. 

1013727 Wasabi

Another finish-off-an-area choice, but less of an odd miss than my previous writeup - as this last hit for me on Dorset Street was closed for a decent while between its previous incarnation (WJ Kavanaghs, a craft beer bar connected to N0222 L Mulligan Grocer) and reopening as a sushi and Brazilian BBQ bar and restaurant.

That sushi-Brazilian combo may seem strange, but I've been assured by actual Brazilians that sushi is huge in parts of Brazil due to a significant Japanese origin population. I think the operator of this pub had a standalone sushi restaurant before expanding to the significant pub + offo setup they have here now, so there does seem to be experience behind the sushi offering. 

But I don't eat fish, so rather like my previous visit to a Brazilian bar in Dublin, I had a picanha burger off the Brazilian BBQ menu, which met expectations.

As goes the food - the bar has a back door on to Georges Place, and every time I was within sight of that door (the toilets are beside it, so that was frequently enough) I could see an army of Deliveroo drivers and their bikes/mopeds - they appear to have developed a solid delivery offering from here during lockdown if not before. 

The clientele is less heavily Brazilian than it was in the now gone 3 Spirits, but they still made up a significant proportion of the customers. But this is more of a restaurant with a pub licence; and 3 Spirits was more in to Brazilian music, football, cheaper pub style food and general fun - its closure and replacement by an office unit is a loss to the Dublin pub scene.

The bar is quite large, so you're unlikely to have trouble getting a table if you drop in. The tap lineup appeared to be the now horrendously common Heineken Ireland Only lineup though, which I really dislike seeing.

N0008 Mullets

This was an odd one to have missed for so long, seeing as I got all of its neighbours by 2019 and most of them much earlier; being near my current office and my former office, and near the train station I use to get home. But for whatever reason, I'd never dropped in, and a gap on a weekday evening provided the perfect opportunity to fix that - and fill an obvious glaring gap in my personal completion map.

At the time of my visit, the bar was being manned by a single, attentive, barman - which did cause a slight delay waiting outside as requested. Cert checked, details taken and pint order received before being directed to sit down - regulations are being followed to the letter here.

This is a very traditional inner-city locals pub, with the quite common for the area hunger striker and 70s IRA commemorative photographs in one corner, with Liverpool FC and Dublin GAA flags and memorabilia decorating the rest of the pub.

As is quite common right now with reduced footfall and limited capacity, there weren't a lot of taps on, which guided me to Guinness. I'm not a full-time Guinness drinker, so won't go in to trying to give a detailed rating as others may - but the pints were fine and relatively cheap at a fiver flat. 

This pub was, at one point, a branch of the Booze2Go off-licence chain which operated entirely from fully licenced pubs; but it reopened using its former name. The physical bar looks very 70s, so presumably some of the fabric of the pub survived its life as an offo.

1017594 Keavan's Port

Ugh.

I'm really not a fan of Wetherspoons, but I've got my remit here, so a new pub needs to be visited. And while their number of pubs in Dublin is going to continue going up - there are already two more in the pipeline now (one I won't have to visit - I was there in its old incarnation); they have just placed their Blackrock pub up for sale (that DublinLive post is just a paraphrasing of the Daft ad, but the Daft ad will likely fall off the internet before the DublinLive one does), so maybe there will be a ceiling on how many someone else doing the same in future will have to visit.

I'd previously identified the Blanchardstown outlet as the least worst 'spoons in Dublin; but I'm going to replace that with here - if you get one of the sort-of snugs to the front of the pub. The main body of the pub was quite busy, but these rooms - which are in the old buildings on Camden Street - were quiet the entire time. You will need to use the app during the current no bar service era, as staff do not check here often.

Wetherspoons do have their place - but that place for me is in England; as a clean pub to get a mediocre meal and some cheap cask ale the day of or after a match or a gig. The cask wasn't on offer in Keavans Port, but others have got some so it depends on when you go there.

I'm fairly sure I won't be back.

1010802 Bow Lane

This begins with a bit of a rant.

Dublin is slowly being overrun with Heineken Ireland near-exclusive tap lineups - Press Up, most of the gig venues and now Bow Lane too. It isn't part of a group, as far as I know, so Heineken are not just focusing on them. 

Its near-exclusive, as there's always Guinness, but otherwise these premises just sell Heineken Irelands Cork-made (Heineken, Coors, Orchard Thieves, Islands Edge) or generally Heineken owned and imported (Lagunitas, Moretti, Tiger) draught products. There's no independent taps, no craft taps and usually this monoculture continues in the bottle fridges too.

I really don't think this is a good thing, and while Heineken Ireland were really the only group with the range of products to do this sort of exclusivity, both Diageo and C&C are close - Diageo missing the premium import products, C&C missing those and a stout - so its not something I want others to try copy. Tied houses via the back door aren't good and could lead to it being done more directly too - Heineken do this in the UK and Netherlands, C&C sort-of do it in Northern Ireland.

Anyway, rant over.

Bow Lane is an replacement for the last of the traditional locals pubs on Aungier Street, run by the operators of the adjacent Whitefriar Grill. I liked the Whitefriar Grill, and Bow Lane itself is fine - the drinks monoculture nonwithstanding.

There did seem to be a push to get the outdoor seats filled up first for some reason, with the staff running the door deferring to what I presume was a manager who was entirely willing to scan me in and let me sit inside - it was one of those rare cases of being too warm to sit outside!

My pint of a Heineken imported product was fine, the interior is nice enough as the fairly uniform mid-10s pubs of Dublin go and I'd be happy enough to go back again if the reason arose. But I'd like to see some variation on the taps.

Revisited Pubs: August 2021

After July's pubs having somehow ended up as a subset of those in June, I've managed to go to different pubs throughout August.

N0006 Brew Dock

N0197 Soup 2 (re-writeup, previous visit as Taproom 47)

N0198 The Cobblestone (awful old writeup)

N1064 The Oval

S0179 The Gasworks

1015426 Rubys

September 2021 Licence Update

(There was no update produced during August)

The time delay it took for the Wetherspoons on Camden Street has allowed it to appear on the register nearly immediately.

Additions: 

1017594 Keavan's Port, Camden Street - Wetherspoons hotel
1017882 IMC Cinema, Santry
1017883 IMC Cinema, Dun Laoghaire

Reapperances:

N0018 Big Tree, Dorset Street - for the soon to open hotel

Renumbered:

S2228 The Orchard, Applewood renumbered to 1017710
S4256 Clayton Hotel, Cardiff Lane renumbered to 1017878