1001991 Wrights Food Court Arrivals T2

The previous post was musing on whether I should continue counting Aerodrome licences as pubs; but was actually fairly like a pub.

This isn't. This is a fridge of bottles (albeit more interesting than the Heineken, Guinness and Budweiser only fridges elsewhere in the airport) available by the checkout in what can be a quite limited food court depending on time of day.

A bottle of O'Haras and a donut on a cheap chair at a cheap table overlooking the dropoff zone is not a pub experience anyone wants to seek out - but elsewhere in the airport, it is worse.

1001987 Oak Cafe Bar

I'm still in two minds about whether Aerodrome licences should count. There's some proper absolutely, definitely pub style spaces with them - Darbys in Weston and even the arrivals bar (currently called The Angel's Share) in Terminal 1 at Dublin Airport has in the past felt really like a pub; but I've ended up drinking a bottle of Heineken at 5am in a temporary structure on the airfield because it had its own licence. And some of the airline lounges have licences, meaning that I'll have to either fly to Abu Dhabi (in Business Class) or remain incomplete.

This one has no such requirements for access; and is at least quite bar-like - it is run by an actual pub operator (Ian Redmond), rather than an airport services firm like most of the others in Dublin Airport, which probably contributes to that.

Food for those waiting for inbound passengers is the main purpose here, but  I was able to obtain an actual draught pint here, and sit in what felt like a pub - the next aerodrome licence (coming up soon) provided neither. So I'm still on the side of them counting - for now.

S4354 TGI Fridays / Dantes (Dundrum Town Centre)

All TGI Fridays are the bloody same - this one, however, shares its licence with an Italian pizza/pasta place next door which is slightly more interesting. It is definitely a restaurant by design (as are TGI Fridays really) rather than a bar, with a small range of beer and wine available; but the licence type is what matters here.

The pizza and bottle of Full Sail was enjoyable anyway, and the licence was ticked off.

N2817 Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown

I'm not a huge fan of carvery dinners - but it turns out that to get suburban hotels, I'm going to have to eat quite a lot of them

Off to the side of the Blanchardstown Centre, and sharing its building with apartments, I wasn't expecting many non-guests to head in to the bar here. However, the carvery was more than busy - but it was Mothers Day, so possibly the worst day to try and judge this on.

The food was as good as you're going to get, bar one bit of incinerated beef that had somehow come through in to my stew; and the drinks options were a bit more varied than most suburban hotels. But you're never going to go here for pints - not even with the relatively low volume of pubs in D15.

N0158 Wrights Findlater

I moaned in the last post about Wrights food-centric venues seating policies, and I suspect that this pub has the same during peak periods - but it was approaching the end of the days food service when I went in and selected myself a prime table with plug sockets. I need charge for both my laptop and my phone at this stage, possibly more critically than I needed food myself, so an obvious twin socket guided me towards a chosen seat more than anything else.

This is the remaining public part of the former St Lawrence Hotel complex; with the bulk of it having been converted to apartments. The building undeniably looks better now after the mid-00s redevelopment, and removal of the brown render it had prior to it. Howth has lost all of its old hotels, as mentioned in the N0166 Summit Inn post, but this one keeps an important part of the old hotel open and operating as well as retaining its original licence.

This was where I decided to get food, and on requesting a menu I was informed of a relatively substantial amount of options that were unavailable due to how busy they had been since the last intake of fresh food on Friday - it was an unseasonably warm weekend and Howth had been incredibly busy. The waitress provided me with the password for the staff wifi on seeing the laptop as apparently there had been complaints about the public network - I hadn't even tried it yet, but had no issues afterwards

The food - what was still available anyway - was good, the staff were friendly and attentive and the drink lineup was relatively good, with a local Hope tap alongside the usuals

The near full availability of Hope in their local pubs here is heartening, and it is interesting that even with one tap per pub in most cases, most of the range was available if you travelled around the town.

N0772 O'Connells

Yet another of the more food oriented pubs of Howth, this one probably has the best views over the harbour from the upstairs bar. I got in here in a lull between two waves of diners and managed to get given a table upstairs without ordering food - had I been ten minutes later I suspect it would have been a bar seat or standing downstairs!

The current incarnation here opened in 2012, after the Pier House pub which had closed down a few years before. PR from the time seemed more focused on the drink options (particularly cocktails) and live music; but with their current position as #2 on Tripadvisor for food in Howth - just behind my previous visit, the Abbey Tavern - food seems to have overtaken that.

N0163 Abbey Tavern

I somehow managed to skip ahead two pubs in Howth in my postings - the Bloody Stream was two pubs after the Habour Bar, and this is the first of those two.

This is a pub in an ancient building - I'm not going to try judge whether their claim that the pub itself is 16th Century is true or not. If you walk down to the pub from my actual previous pub, you get to do so via a laneway that could be anywhere back to the 1500s anyway.

This pub specialises in food, to such an extent that finding somewhere to sit otherwise on a busy day is near impossible. I did obtain a perch at a table towards the back but rather felt like I was somewhat in the way of what must be the more profitable business.

Going off a single visit on a single, oddly warm/sunny day, this was my least favourite of the pubs in Howth; but none of them were really bad - there's no horror in being worst of a decent bunch.