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!