While perhaps rather less traditional-looking than many pubs, this week’s destination is one that is surrounded by many classic Victorian pubs, and so perhaps serves as something of a palate-cleanser: Bar Rua.
Just steps away from well-trodden spots that often appear in tourist must-visit lists, including The Long Hall, Neary’s and The Hairy Lemon, Bar Rua looks, at first glance, more like a late 1980s/early 1990s hype restaurant – think a little bit like Spago-on-the-Liffey. The modern red-and-glass exterior does have, in the local parlance, ‘a bang of the Celtic Tiger on it,’ but it’s a softer impression inside. While still clean and modern, the photos of Irish celebrities lining the walls do add a more ‘pubby’ feel, and there’s something reassuring about Brendan Gleeson casting a watchful eye over the premises.
Another unusual feature of this pub is that there are guestrooms above it, so again, despite its non-traditional look, it does hearken back, in some ways, to the functions of an inn. As a sidebar, we also discovered that you can also stay above The Beer Temple – this was news to us! There are a variety of spaces spread across the building, so private events are common, with bars in multiple locations. One slight oddity on our visit was that the Full Sail – one of Galway Bay Brewing’s flagship beers, and always a solid option – was not available anywhere despite its tap handle popping up in different parts of the pub, but that was made up for by an excellent guest beer from Belfast’s Boundary instead. Is Bar Rua, indeed, still officially a Galway Bay pub? The property was sold a few years ago, and it certainly still has a fair few Galway Bay beers and their food menu, although it doesn’t show up under ‘our bars’ on their website…but it’s there if you do a bit of digging. Granted, this much more ‘inside baseball’ that the average punter likely cares about, but hey, we’re curious.
In any event, the food, drink selection (minus the absent Full Sail, on this occasion) and service are all on point; we’re still disappointed with recent visits to The Brew Dock, which is still very much in the Galway Bay stable, but all of those elements were in fine shape at Bar Rua. And with so much choice in the area, pubs here need to be on top of their game; it’s easy enough to walk a few doors down if something doesn’t suit or seems ‘off’ on the day, or if you’re simply seeking a change of pace.
And we confess it had been some time since we’d last popped in to Bar Rua – possibly not since the 2024 Women’s Mini Marathon, when they were offering very welcome free glasses* of any flagship beer to finishers. Our party was certainly on brand on that occasion, with red faces from the effort (‘rua’ being an Irish word for ‘red,’ though at least in the smaller offspring’s school, they prefer ‘dearg’ for a ‘red’ red) – perhaps we need to stop in again after this year’s event…though a race medal is certainly not required to enter the pub.
We had a lovely visit on a recent chill Sunday afternoon – it’s not always easy to achieve calm in Dublin city centre on a weekend, but Bar Rua kept us cosy, well-fed and well-watered: a very relaxed spot indeed.
Where: 32 Clarendon St, Dublin 2, D02 HX66
Access from the city centre: You are there
Food: Standard Galway Bay menu, plus a cheese plate
Sport: All the usual big games & sport are on
TVs: Many all around the pub
Music: Fairly MOR tunes in the background
Family-friendliness: As with all Galway Bay spots, very welcoming
Pub-crawl-ability: High – Neary’s, The Hairy Lemon, Caribou, Sheehan’s, The Long Hall, Grogan's, Peter's Pub, Sinnott's Bar and more are all nearby
Local sites of note: Gaiety Theatre, Craft Central, Little Museum of Dublin, George's Street Arcade, St Stephen's Green, Grafton Street
Haunted: Celtic Tiger ghosts?
Other notes: Many levels and upstairs toilets, so not especially accessible, despite being a modern building
Socials: Facebook, Instagram
*For the visitor, a ‘glass’ in Ireland is a half-pint.
This week, we remain on the south side of Dublin with a visit to 
And it was a very pleasant discovery indeed – the Dark Arts was as fresh as promised, but there were other independent offerings as well, notably Sullivan’s Black Marble Stout from Kilkenny. There were several Changing Times beers, and while we 
It’s a very ‘pubby’ pub, with the usual dark woods and a lovely decorative ceiling. The atmosphere was very calming, certainly a change from the post-holiday shopping and pizza lines outside. It wasn’t quite full 
Rather like 
We’ve not always been fair to 
The first point in its favour – for us, anyway – is its support for local independent beer: there are multiple 
While it’s true that when in this general direction we are more often to be found at 
While 
And it is, perhaps, fitting that Neary’s is a pub that attracts this kind of lore; its beautifully-maintained interior hearkens back to the 1880s – well, at least in the main bar downstairs – while upstairs, it’s a slightly more updated restaurant feel, but still elegantly understated. The 
In our effort to fill in the blanks when we see you getting lost in our search results, we’re aiming to visit some of the more common pubs on the tourist trail here and there, now that the bulk of the summer holidaymakers have gone home. Indeed, this week’s pub is one we’ve only ever previously visited in that capacity, years before moving to Dublin: The Long Hall.
Visiting again with more ‘local’ eyes does make you notice different things, but the fundamentals remain the same: the beautifully-maintained – and, in this case, likely genuinely world-famous – exterior of the pub is unmistakable, with its signature red-and-off-white stripes. Inside, it’s the kind of high Victorian décor that is more commonly a pastiche these days, but The Long Hall comes by it honestly: its last real renovation was in the 1880s. And while the deep reds and dark woods are common to many other local Dublin pubs of this vintage – a subject to which we’ll return – there are unique features here, including the 
Cask ale, as we have often complained, is something of a rarity in Ireland. While there are a few more pubs with a regular cask offering up in Belfast, here in Dublin, it is simply not a regular feature in most pubs. Happily, though, a tipoff from a reader (cheers, Ciaran!) alerted us to a beer engine in regular use at Harty’s Bar. Naturally, we dropped everything to go investigate.
One reason this pub had not been on our radar is that, appearances notwithstanding, it’s a fairly new establishment (but also not; bear with us) – until about 18 months ago, it was the Dingle Whiskey Bar. But like its neighbour, 
While it doesn’t have the selection of beers next door in Tapped, with its enormous bar, for a small space, it has a good lineup of some of the more standard Porterhouse beers – the Plain Porter, Yippy IPA and Red – as well as Trouble’s Ambush. There’s also Guinness, of course, and Beamish. But as you know, we were here for the cask option: this week, it was 
It’s time for another one of our rare trips into Dublin city centre proper with a visit to McDaid’s, a pub with a fine literary heritage. Granted, there are many, many pubs here with similar claims to fame, but most do come by it quite honestly. There’s the requisite 
It would be interesting to do a deeper dive into the history of the building and previous pubs trading on this site…the ‘est 1779’ above the door has little to do with the current incarnation of the pub, which is a mid-20th century affair, and the building that houses it is 
This week, it’s another relatively rare visit into the more touristy part of town as we visit 
Kennedy’s is another pub I’ve walked past many times without entering, but I finally had a bit of free time in the area this week, so stopped in for a sneaky daytime glass after visiting the National Gallery. While not nearly as extensive a list of craft beer taps as nearby 
There’s a lovely tiled bar in the basement for live music and events, and this space as well as the terra cotta decoration on the pub’s exterior add unique touches, while the rest of the interior feels a bit more ‘standard Irish pub.’ All told, it’s probably more of a destination for those on literary walking tours than anything else, but it’s nice to find a spot in tourist-land with a few craft beers; it’s not necessarily a given in Dublin.
Back in the day – you know, perhaps 3 years ago – this week’s pub was The Porterhouse Central. It was a very handy spot in that you could enjoy a mix of interesting beers from Porterhouse and various guest options, but you avoided 
However, I happened to be in the area and had a bit of time after a meeting, so I gave Tapped another try. I’m pleased to say that the interior, while still feeling just slightly too ‘taproom’ has been softened and improved. There is now much more comfortable seating and the lighting is more dialled-in; it feels warmer on the whole. There are screens showing the beer lineup, 
Edit again, mid-April 2025: Welcome to 
We’ll come back to his point about the people later, but at first glance, I had the same reaction – why on earth had what looked like an Oirsh pub been dropped into the centre of Dublin? While it’s true that there are Dublin pubs that cater more to the tourist trade than to locals (and not just in Temple Bar) that do dip into a more stereotypical ‘Irish pub’ feel, to tip over into what we might call Full Oirish seemed, well, unseemly. Unnecessary. Just a bit, well, naff.
While it’s still a small spot, the dark wood and low lighting add to the cosy feel, and the interior décor is very much ‘Easter Rising’ themed with images of the leaders around the pub, it doesn’t veer off into a theme park feel; indeed, given that the pub is steps away from the GPO, if the interior matched the exterior sign, it could easily career rapidly into the realm of the offensive. But – and here’s the thing – it does not! It’s quite nice! It includes portraits of many of the women involved – something especially notable if, like me, you’ve recently watched ‘Michael Collins’ for the first and only time, and wondered where the women were…but I digress.