We’ve not always been fair to The Hairy Lemon.
In truth, until recently, we’d only visited it in a tourist capacity, long before moving to Dublin (see also: The Long Hall), and as a result, it felt less like a ‘local’ pub and more like one that catered purely to those here on brief trips. And while it certainly has a booming tourist trade, a more recent stop by made us realise that there’s more going on here, and that it can be well worth a drop in when we’re at Craft Central anyway. Uh, we are not infrequently ‘at Craft Central anyway’ – but that’s another story.
The first point in its favour – for us, anyway – is its support for local independent beer: there are multiple Rye River taps, and they are all kept in excellent shape. Indeed, it has always felt like many of the more tourist-friendly pubs are missing a trick by not highlighting other Irish beers. Yes, people want their Guinness, but plenty of tourists also want to follow it up with something else that seems unique or exclusive to the area. The Hairy Lemon does a fine job of offering both experiences, and not just a token ‘extra’ tap – there’s not just a variety of styles from Rye River, but also Murphy’s and the rarer Murphy’s Red.
While it’s true that when in this general direction we are more often to be found at Caribou, with other beer options in a more ‘bar’ vibe setting, tourists (or anyone else) looking for more of an traditional pub feel are well catered to at The Hairy Lemon. And it comes by its ‘Irish pub’ bona fides honestly: the current all-yellow paintjob may be more recent, but it’s been a pub since at least the mid-19th century. The Hairy Lemon is named for one of Dublin’s many ‘characters’ – like Bang Bang (commemorated in both café and pub form, with Bang Bang in Phibsborough and Dudley’s in The Liberties), The Hairy Lemon was ‘known’ around town, and while he had no specific connection to the pub, it honours his memory, and, more broadly, that of the other long-gone Dublin ‘characters.’
And if on your visit to The Hairy Lemon it seems packed full of tourists at lunchtime, a wander upstairs can be blissfully calm; there are several pleasant nooks and crannies in which to sit with a quiet solo pint, even here in the middle of town.
Where: 41-42 Stephen Street Lower, Dublin 2
Access from the city centre: You are there
Food: Breakfast, pub grub, tourist faves, kids’ menu
Sport: Essentially all of them
TVs: Many all around the pub
Music: Fairly MOR tunes, at least on a weekday afternoon; live music in the evenings
Family-friendliness: Always a fair few kids during the day and evening and plenty of food for them
Pub-crawl-ability: High – Neary’s, Caribou, Bar Rua, The Long Hall, Grogan's, Peter's Pub, Sinnot's Bar and more are all nearby
Local sites of note: Gaiety Theatre, Craft Central (we said what we said), Little Museum of Dublin, George's Street Arcade, St Stephen's Green, Grafton Street
Haunted: An appalling lack of good ghost stories
Other notes: Still looks more or less the same as it did when The Commitments was filmed here
Socials: Instagram, Facebook
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 
As regular readers know, we are always on the lookout for 
While the ‘since 1793’ date is a little shaky, given the current building’s construction 
So, ghosts aside, what is the pub like? Well…most definitely not creepy. If anything, it’s a bit too polished to feel at all like a liminal space. There are several very different sections of the pub with their own character, but none are especially dark or gloomy. The front is much more ‘pubby’ and the rear more of a restaurant or hotel bar vibe (the many large TV screens are part of what gives that impression), though it’s worth knowing that the back bar is where the sole local-craft-beer representative is; there’s a Rye River tap if you know where to look. Indeed, the food was very good – a step up from a lot of pub food, though the enormous portions are perhaps created more for tourists than locals. There’s also the usual Guinness – and Murphy’s – plus some Warsteiner.
There’s a covered outdoor space too, more 
The 1884 is so called after 
And like many pubs in the more suburban parts of Dublin, it’s absolutely enormous inside – indeed, somewhat barn-like. But it’s all very tidy, and there’s plenty of space to spread out. There are much-appreciated coat hooks under the bar, which really should be standard everywhere, but here we are. Only a few years ago, this pub was known as Grainger’s, and it had, well, a 
And while the beer selection is mostly the usual Guinness-and-Heineken-and-so-so-much-Rockshore (despite being listed as a stockist of Hope, brewed just a bit further north), there is also the lesser-spotted Kilkenny, which has been popping up here and there of late, and it’s a nice alternative. The real hidden gem of The 1884, though, is the enormous 
While it does have a theoretically reasonably interesting drinks lineup, like its fellow Bodytonic-managed bar, 
It is, of course, entirely possible that it’s simply aiming for a younger/cooler demographic, which is fair enough…though it does beg the question as to why there’s a mural of Peter Fonda on one side of the building…it’s not something that resonates with GenXers like us…are the younger Millennials into Easy Rider? We’ve been told it’s a ‘no’ from Gen Z: ‘…it’s no Taxi Driver.’
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 
We know that we tend to be biased toward pubs on the north side of the Liffey, but this week, we travel (relatively) far into south Dublin – all the way to Blackrock and . Once a quiet fishing village with a sideline in 
And while the 
There are some lovely little snugs and the pub also has a bit of a nautical bent – the seafront is right here, after all – but it’s very welcoming to all; the standard Guinness (and Beamish!) is on offer, and there is good support for independent offerings like Hope and Wicklow Wolf, as well as 
Have we found Dublin’s darkest pub?
All told, though, the vibe at Frank Ryan’s is extremely laid-back, and it can be a respite from the sun on a hot day; it’s not the sort of pub that’s going to be to everyone’s taste, but with so many in the broader 
The recent run of warm weather has led to prioritising pubs with lovely 
A recent BlueSky chat was a reminder that unlike the Neighbouring Island, we have few pubs that are a middle ground between Old Man Pubs, with a standard macro lineup (always Guinness, of course, plus Heineken or perhaps Carlsberg) and ‘hipster’ pubs with interesting craft beers…there’s no direct equivalent of a free house with a mix of standard macros, family brewery offerings on cask (sob) and local indies here in Ireland (with a very few exceptions – 
It’s also worth mentioning just how spacious Kodiak is – the main floor has two full bars, each with its own distinct feel (one darker, one brighter) and tap lineup, so for you beer nerds, check out both, and then there’s the large beer garden at the back. Then there’s even more upstairs (shuffleboard!) – hangout spaces that would be ideal for parties, and the well-designed toilets can be reached via lift or stairs. Indeed, simply by moving around different parts of the pub, you can switch up your experience of the place: start off with a chill solo pint in subdued lighting, then grab some sun 
The staircase formerly connected floors in Trinity College, and the beer garden out back can even be heated when necessary (though as with so many of the more interior-feeling beer gardens in Dublin, it can tend toward feeling very smoky). All told, it feels very ‘pubby,’ but what strikes me is the very noticeable vibe shift when the tour groups leave. It took a few visits to realise that it wasn’t just the freeing up of part of the pub that made the real difference; rather, it was the music. When the groups are in, the music is not just trad (there is, after all, plenty of good trad out there), but full-on diddly-eye trad – the sort of music that might have been featured on an American PBS station 40+ years ago. But once they go, there’s a break – either no music, or a change to something a bit more current. Perhaps it’s coincidence, but it’s something we’ve noticed on multiple visits – and it’s no bad thing!
Now, this is not to say that some of the more touristy pubs are doing their customers a disservice in any way; to the contrary, they are doing a great job of catering to multiple demographics, and more power to them. And Nancy Hands also does a great job of supporting local writers –