S0170 The Wellington

Wellington. Waterloo. Baggot Street could be any High Street in England with these pub names. This one at least comes with less risk of Abba outbreaks amongst patrons who think they can sing.

This is an actually tiny - it looks bigger from outside, which is not a common occurrence -  traditional city pub just a little bit outside the centre, sited as it is just outside the canals.

Live music is apparently offered here - I'm not sure where they fit it. Drink options are not good, but the atmosphere should make up for that.

S0172 The Waterloo

This most English named of pubs is a long and narrow premises on Baggot Street with a busy bar downstairs and a quieter (at time of my visit) craft-specific upstairs bar. Which I wasn't aware of, and ordered something far less interesting off the downstairs taps as a result before ending up upstairs anyway.

The major defining feature of this pub is a huge painting of a times past Baggot Street along the wall opposite the bar downstairs - my poor low-light photo does not give it justice. This painting does unfortunately show how much more interesting the building that the nearby Searsons pub is in is, but it does show that they didn't censor the artist at all.

Apparently there is an upstairs outdoor area, which may have been nice considering the utterly abnormal warmth on the evening (mid November - in Ireland) I visited on; but I didn't notice it as I don't generally look for the smoking area in pubs.

S0183 Ryans Beggars Bush

My quest for dinner, as mentioned in the previous post, continued. I should probably have either gone back to The Old Spot or across the road to knock Chophouse off the list but for some reason I went down Haddington Road, and ended up in Ryans.

Ryans doesn't do food in the evenings. Eventually, Tolteca on Baggot Street sorted that out for me, but I only found out after I had ordered a pint that this is a lunchtime (or pre-booked party) food venue

Like most pubs in this area, Ryans is set up to cope with match day crowds with a substantial outdoor seating area to the front. It was an abnormally warm night for mid-November so I decided to sit outside - and was joined by some other non-smokers in doing so.

On non-match days the pub seems to mostly draw on the tech industry nearby for its patronage - at least based on one visit, which can be extremely unrepresentative.

I think it was a mostly macro lineup here, but I was hungry and grumpy and had basically ordered a pint on false pretenses caused by Google Maps so I can't actually remember what I had.

S0177 The Bath

Sometimes you end up taking an opinion of a pub from a first impression which was mistaken - when I entered and ordered here I was presented with a macro-only tap lineup. There's craft options on a second set of taps to the rear of the bar.

However, the second impression here also created an instant negative - there was an overwhelming smell of creosote from some of the furniture which I assume is set up to be brought outside on match days - free up standing room inside and give perching space outside.

I was looking for somewhere to get dinner at the time - the smell of likely carcinogens in the air alone did not kill my appetite, but no wait staff coming over to me for 20 minutes ensured I went elsewhere.

Should be fine for a pint on a match day but I wouldn't bother otherwise.

1003568 The Old Spot

Lucinda O'Sullivan described this as a restaurant with a bar. It is.

Outside of major sporting events, where more space is turned over to drinking and less to eating; this is a high end restaurant with a very small bar on the way in. The bar itself is fine, with a decent range of beers, but it was difficult to find a seat early on a mid-month Friday evening - although had I wanted to eat, there were seats aplenty available.

If you want to drink in the area, there are other pubs nearby. If you want to grab a pint before eating here, they've got a more than acceptable selection.

S0302 Purty Kitchen

This is the Dun Laoghaire/Monkstown premises, not the now renamed Temple Bar superpub. I really should investigate the link, if any, between them (and possibly S1486 Purty Central in Clondalkin)!

This pub claims to be established in 1728 and, unlike when a city venue makes a claim to antiquity, I'd have reason to believe this one. Located on a street with a name prone to cause certain Irish language activists to have kittens - Old Dunleary Road, this would have been a roadhouse of sorts prior to the dawn of the railways and now, some centuries later, has a reputation as a music venue and also targets food customers.

From the perspective of pub-bagging, its quite similar to most larger suburban pubs with nothing jumping out to make it a must-visit, but the gigs upstairs have a wide appeal and are likely to draw people in from far enough away.

S0264 O'Loughlins

Sometimes a pubs reputation precedes, often negatively, sometimes positively. In the case of O'Loughlins, there are huge amounts of vaguely accurate references to it whenever old fashioned/traditional pubs get discussed, with claims of various levels of truth being made.

Two recurrent ones come up about O'Loughlins, amongst huge amounts of one-off claims. One can be dismissed as impossible - that it hasn't got water. The HSE would have it closed down years ago if this was the case. The second one is that is has no till. This is factually incorrect, but as the till is a Victorian ornament and its always open cash drawer is used only occasionally used, the result is much the same.

The pub is nearly invisible online - beyond the aforementioned semi-factual posts and entries on a few pub listing sites there is basically nothing else . The bulk of the results are actually for McLoughlins, a completely different pub nearby. But it very much exists and has a regular customer base, greeted by name by the barman. I was all but instructed to take the seat at the bar of a departing customer (by said customer) when I walked in, and had two of the cheaper pints - and a bag of crisps - that you're likely to find. There's a proper sense of community with the regulars and the staff; and notices up for various events including a charity BBQ night (In December. In Ireland!)

The pub has 7 taps, all Diageo except Heineken. There is a small selection of spirits and liquers, many of them with dust coating the bottles from how rarely they are used. There are a few under-counter fridges of mixers and bottled cider and beers including, amazingly, a small amount of Irish craft. Cash is left strewn around the shelves in a manner which clearly has some logic to the barman, but none to the observer. The overall feel is of a small town pub in the West, not one on the main street of a busy suburb.