Come Here To Me!

A certain northsider gives me hope. The ode to Damien Dempsey on the side of The Good Bits may be gone, but The Good Bits itself seems here to stay. No small achievement in this part of the city, where this premises has become the Dublin pub equivalent of ‘that house on the corner’. People seemed to move in and out of here all the time.

I’ve been here before, a few times. Down in the cave, where the music is thumping and the place is busy. We review pubs on this site, and not nightclubs, so that aspect of the place doesn’t count to us purists. I’m here to see what kind of pub The Good Bits makes. I had planned to include this on my last pub crawl, only to be met by the sight you fear most before your pub crawl departs. A ‘CLOSED’ sign.

Firstly, there is much more than a new name to this place. A lot of thought has gone into the interior. You forget details like this when you’ve been into a packed nightclub, and so you need to see the place again in a new light. I’d popped in Friday briefly to collect something and decided that was my lunch hour sorted for the next day, purely on liking the look of the place.

The lunch offers are good, a nice range of tapas options joined by a few standards. I’m racing the clock so wolf down a steak sambo with a pint, and both get high marks. The staff are bang on, attentive and friendly. My lunch hour consists of me rushing in the door of somewhere and ordering before I’ve sat down, but they’re understanding. The Guinness lives up to the reputation, as a few people had told me it was a good bet during the day. As a rule I don’t order Guinness in any nightclub environment, but to call The Good Bits a nightclub is doing a disservice to its qualities as a pub.

I throw a quick eye about and while the decor is quite minimalist, it works. Despite being here for quite a while now too (I dare say longer than some previous tenants!) the place is not at all showing any wear or tear. As a rule of thumb I never state why we’re looking around a boozer, but a member of staff asks me if I’ve not been before and we strike up a quick conversation on the place and how it has met the challenges of location, being just a tad outside the main ‘night club’ part of town. It looks as fresh as the first I entered it. The crowd during the day seem a good bit older than the night owls unsurprisingly, I get the impression I’m not the only one on a lunch break.

Any complaints? Not really, just get someone to give the front a lick of paint again. The Good Bits Gives Me Hope for Store Street, let’s hope she sticks around.