This June weather is great isn’t it? Hail, wind, then sunshine, then rain, some thunder and then sunshine again. Such was yesterday in Dublin. Hail in Swords, but to be fair, the City Centre wasn’t too bad and myself and the DFallon lad went for a leisurely stroll and took in grub and a few pints.
Boojum, for anyone who hasn’t yet sampled their delights, is quite simply the business and is becoming my favourite spot for a Saturday morning hungover burrito for breakfast. Located in Mick Wallace’s “Italian Quarter,” you can’t go too far wrong at €6 for an absolutely packed burrito with shredded beef, pinto beans, rice, salsa, guacamole and cheese. Throw in a bottle of beer and you’re laughing. I strongly advise people to give it a go.
Burritos for breakfast
Crossing the Millennium Bridge I spotted the below, a great, simple piece that I’d love to see more of in the city. The glut of bloody ugly buildings with boring facades that popped up over the last two decades could do with a bit of brightening up.
Ah Guinness. Daniel O’Connell might not have been the firms biggest fan, with the famous Guinness boycott of the 1841 Repeal election always forgotten today in the romantic narrative of the company’s history, but we here at Come Here To Me are certainly fond of the great “Protestant porter”.
You’d want to be but. Being honest about it, it’s not like you’ve a whole lot of options beyond it. Indeed, to borrow and rework a great quote from history, the Irish punter can have a drink in any colour that they like as long as it’s black. If they don’t want it black, they can have a pint of Budweiser.
The lack of selection in Irish pubs is pretty miserable. Even Witherspoons, the McDonalds of the British pub world, offer a wide selection of beers both local and national throughout their outlets. Here at home though, it seems Diageo have everyone by the bollocks. With that in mind, I’ve been trying some new things lately.
I have to say, I feel like a vegetarian who just tasted his first donor kebab. It really is that good. Here are three favourites so far:
1: Plain, The Porterhouse.
Plain, Temple Bar.
Walking into The Porterhouse, I was taken aback by the image of Flann O’Brien by the door. The check of them, I thought. O’Brien was more often (or too often) to be found down the far end of Temple Bar of course, in The Palace. Still, when you taste their inhouse stout, you understand the choice of image in the doorway perfectly. A pint of plain truly is your only man.
Plain is an All-Ireland champion stout, and deservedly so. Indeed, she’s the Global Gold Medal winner of Best Stout in the World.The rich, roasted malts make this one, and she just goes to show the Corkonians that once again the best stout in the world claims Dublin as home.
2: Spitfire,Kentish Ale.
The Spitfire beer bottle looks like somebody gave a Glasgow Rangers Supporters Club a bootleg copy of Photoshop and asked them to design a bottle of beer. ‘THE BOTTLE OF BRITAIN’ it proclaims, and the whole thing is a red,white and blue designers nightmare. The bottlecap is a beaut, taking in the classic RAF logo which was later adopted by the mod youth subculture in Britain.
Have you seen the ads? No? Jesus……
The stuff is absolutely beautiful but. A 4.5% ale, it’s got a gorgeous hoppy, bitter taste to it. We found it in O’Neills on Sufolk Street retailing at a very fair €4 a bottle. They gave us a glass of ice with it, which I thought was very odd and didn’t work with the beer.
Spitfire is currently on sale in Aldi of all places at a knockdown price.
3: Galway Hooker
I’ve great time for any pub which is willing to move beyond the old predictables, and I was surprised to see the Galway Hooker van parked outside The Palace on Fleet Street. This has long been a favourite, and was probably my first trek of the beaten track with alcohol. Galway Hooker has been very successful in its home city, making the great leap into a student bar, which says a lot when student bars are more often associated with cans of Dutch Gold under a table than pint glasses on it. There’s a great bitterness to this one, and it is quite widely available by the standards of smaller microbrewery drinks in this country.
From Hunt Emerson- Firkin (1989). Scanned from 'the brothers' collection.
I popped into the inaugural MylesDay on Friday. Flann O’Brien is among my favourite writers to emerge from this country, and The Palace Bar is undoubtedly the most fitting of places to honour him, owing to his frequent custom in times long past.
I arrived at 2:15, a quarter of an hour before kick-off. Alas, there was not a seat to be found in the pub. Journalists, writers, plain people of Ireland like myself and more besides had gathered for a day of readings and performances.
Val O’Donnell got things off to a flying start with bookhandling. It’s all in the delivery of course, and Val was just the man to launch the day:
A visit that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting. I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.
‘When I get settled down properly,’ said the fool, ‘I’ll have to catch up on my reading.’
This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.
One by one excellent performers rose to pay tribute to O’Brien and as the clocks ticked away the laughter went on unabated.
I hope MylesDay becomes an annual event. Well done to the organisers, speakers and performers. The brother says he’s raging he missed it.
New here? Once a month we visit five Dublin pubs, give them a quick once over, and review them here. Simple.
This pub crawl was made all the better by the fact we’ve decided to attempt to couple all future crawls with a cultural event. We’d met up earlier than usual on the Sunday in question to take in a walking tour of Grangegorman Military Cemetery, and as such were feeling pretty chuffed with ourselves. Pints are great, granted- but they’re always nicer after a day out.
Anyway, this months pubs….
Right opposite the Ha’penny Bridge, I was always amazed by the fact a large premises at the entrance to Merchants Arch was allowed sit vacant for so long. Once an Abrakebabra, and a rowdy one at that, it must be one of those city centre business premises doomed to failure in any guise I thought. Now, with the arrival of the Merchants Arch Bar, maybe all has changed.
This pub is one of those pubs where you have to make your way past a young woman with a menu in hand to get in. In post Celtic Tiger Dublin, it’s a pretty standard fixture with any Temple Bar establishment. While I’ve heard the food here is excellent, I’ve a good feed in me already and besides my student pockets don’t allow it (PRIORITIES), and a round of pints are the height of it. The interior of the pub is beautiful, I’d compare it almost to the downstairs of the nearby Workman’s Club. Minimal and classic. There is no clutter here on the walls, like in the ‘done up’ (read: completely ruined) Eamonn Doran’s only a short distance away. There, it’s all Michael Collins, Shamrocks and the little people.
There is rugby on the telly. I know absolutely nothing about rugby. I know one thing though, this is loud. Just too loud to let conversation flow freely. Despite the bar being quite busy for the time of day, nobody is really watching the game. The pints arrive quickly and are worthy of a thumbs up. All in all, this new venture gets our support and I think I’ll be back. It’s hardly the only pub in Dublin where the telly gets more priority than it maybe should.
I’m delighted to see something good done with this premises, it was a shame to see a building right next to the Ha’penny Bridge rotting away.
We’re off to The Lotts next. This is the pub which famously got behind the Mexicans at the last World Cup, talk about a lucky selection.
This is Saint Patrick’s Athletic territory. Anyone who follows the League around here tends to head for Inchicore, and the closest club. Even Rovers arriving in West Dublin didn’t impact on our support here in any real way.
Imagine my surprise then the first time I spotted a Bohs scarf behind the bar in the local.
Well, half a Bohs scarf. It’s half them, half Glenville. They’re the local F.C, and the scarf remembers an FAI Cup tie that nobody associated with them will likely ever forget. It didn’t end in glory, but just getting there was a great day for the community. Fittingly enough, it was played in Richmond Park.
“Someone should bring in a Pats scarf for the wall…..” starts the conversation. The election follows. You overhear others having very similar discussions. Paddy Power is right next door and it’s not horses they’re all watching this week, but gombeens and hopefuls, ‘also rans’ and likely bets.
It’s quiet enough. It’s a Sunday night granted, but I’ve been here on Sunday nights before. Barcelona and Bilbao is coming to an end on the television, a couple of punters half following the encounter.
The downstairs of the Silver Granite has a great little snug, but like the best of them it’s frequently full and can fill up early. We take up two seats just inside the door, and order a pint. The pint here has always been excellent. One becomes four. Four almost becomes five. Best leave it at one if anyone asks….
It’s a shame I don’t visit this place more, it is afterall ‘the local’. Spending most of my free time in the city centre, it’s just a matter of location. My location more than the pubs.
With that one, magically refilling pint out of the way, we’re off. There’s all the normal nods and quick chats that come with a visit to the local. It might not have the Korean pop music of The Hop House, where I more frequently head for, but it is on my doorstep.
Clean, nice barstaff, a very good pint. Like most locals, it’s grand.
A strange week for CHTM! Two of us were in Hamburg but not at the same time, both to see St. Pauli play. The one who planned months in advance (ie. me) ended up having no game to go to as it was called off due to an unplayable pitch, and the one who got his tickets on the off chance of us meeting someone nice enough to part way with a couple six days before their game (ie. DFallon) did. Thats the way it goes I guess, but both of us were welcomed with open arms into a pub by the name of Shebeen, not far from the Millerntor Stadium where St. Pauli ply their trade. Enough to have us already planning our next trip over.
The outstanding thing I found about the Shebeen (apart from the fact that there’s a hairdressers on the way to the jacks) was the above Robert Ballagh piece on the wall, depicting a rally in Dublin in support of the Hungerstrikers. It’s rare enough to see one of these in Dublin so imagine my surprise when I saw it taking pride of place here…
Unless you’re a newcomer to CHTM, you’ll know that on one Sunday a month the three of us, in the company of a small group of friends head out on a pub crawl, with pubs carefully selected by one member of our troop but not revealed until we’re standing outside the door. Five pubs with a bit of history thrown in, what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Unbeknownst to ourselves, we hit a landmark on January’s crawl and didn’t celebrate it in style. We’ve been wondering how long it would take us to reach the hundred pubs mark on CHTM! and we did it here, and in less than a year- with three of our number drinking bottles of Lech and another a Lithuanian beer called Svyturys in O’Byrnes Bar, on the corner of Capel St. and Bolton St. Don’t get me wrong, we found it to be a lovely place; any pub with an open fire gets our vote of confidence pretty much straight away. It was just the fact that we thought our hundredth pub would be a great pint of Guinness in an institution like Mulligans or the Lord Edward; our fault really, covering them in the first couple of pub crawls.
O'Byrnes Bar, taken from the Tale of Ale blog
O’Byrnes though- a lovely pub with sound staff and a great taste in decor- the walls are bedecked with some classic 7″ records alongside old Hot Press covers and obligatory pictures of the Dubliners, Thin Lizzy and the likes. We neglected to take the comfy looking couches inside the door in favour of the seats down the back beside the (unfortunately dying) fire. This place has been known as a “corner of death,” in that any business opened here in recent years rarely lasts too long, but the current owners have done a fine job in bringing something to the place, offering a range of Irish craft beers and ales which come highly recommended from the excellent Tale of Ale blog. Great tunes filtered in over the stereo too, a mix of classic and Irish rock. As nice as it was, its a pub I’d like to return to on a busy night to really see what its like. As with all of the pubs on this crawl, there was no smoking area. Lucky we only had the one smoker with us so!
Bodkins, by the ever brilliant Infomatique, from Flickr
And so, we ventured across the road to Bodkins. Probably our first “student bar” to visit on a pub crawl, this was more a space filler between bars one and three than one I’d normally pick. Lets call it a “cultural experiment.” We were joined here by a pub crawl newbie and happily started into the Guinness. €4 a pint, not bad for the city centre, but certainly not the best pint of Guinness we have tasted on our rounds; a bit of an aftertaste and it lost it’s head very quickly. They do a €5 bar menu and thats probably the cause of that. They also have free wifi and do a “laptop loan” (“unless you’re an asshole” as per their site, which is fair enough.) There’s not many places left in the city centre with pool tables, but this being the closest DIT Bolton Street has to a student bar, you can see why they’re there, alongside a signed Man. Utd. jersey in memory of a young lad that passed away, a jukebox and plenty of televisions showing the footie. It has drink deals (three bottles of Sol for a tenner and that kind of thing, ) but in complete opposite from our next stop, its certainly no local.
The owner, Ciarán Finnerty, told The Irish Times yesterday he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the Ormond Quay premises. He said while he was “heartbroken”, he was not prepared to trade recklessly and so had no choice but to put the business into voluntary liquidation.
A creditors’ meeting is to be held next Tuesday and he expressed the hope someone would step in by then and buy the business, which employs 18 people. “It seems hopeless, but we are still working flat out on the off-chance that we can save the name at least. I built the place up from the ground; there was nothing there before I opened it. I will be heartbroken if if goes but I will have to move on.”
The Digital Projects section of Dublin City Public Libraries have over the past year done great work in sticking up old images of the City in times past. The latest collection to go online is one hundred and thirty or so images of Dublin pubs, some whose doors are still open, others who who live only in the memories of ex- punters. The full gallery can be seen here.
The Commodore, from Dublin City Public Libraries
The Swallow, from Dublin City Public Libraries
The site is a mine of photographic information, they have fantastic galleries on Dublin’s Sporting Heritage, the ’74 Dublin Bombings, “Missing Dublin” and now this. I look forward to more.
We still get a good bit of google traffic from people searching ‘Pygmalion half price Sunday’. The Powerscourt Shopping Centre boozer was always quite expensive, but had a habit of filling up on a Sunday. At one stage, I’d made six sessions in a row.
While there was always a certain amount of ‘Polaroid App on my iPhone’ to the place, to be honest you couldn’t really care less if you were coming back with change for a tenner on four drinks now could you?
Well, the worst financial news since Brian Lenihan and Oli Rehn sat down together has reached us here at the blog. Half price Sunday in Pygmalion is no more. Now, it is 40% off.
40% off!? How awkward can you get. This, coupled with too frequent cameo appearances in Fade Street mean perhaps our Sunday evenings will be spent elsewhere. Won’t somebody think of the economy?
Is the Legal Eagle the last of the ‘Free In, Half Price’ Sunday pubs?
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 