While Dublin city centre certainly has plenty of pubs, we are fortunate in also having additional parts of town that are also jam-packed with excellent options, especially when the holidays can make those in the immediate centre more crowded than usual. Smithfield and Stoneybatter are particularly blessed with not only a large number of pubs, but pubs that all have their own individual character – there’s cosy vibes with craft beer and pizza at Bonobo, or fantastic food and local colour at L. Mulligan. Grocer, plus all the trad music you could wish for at The Cobblestone – and that’s name-checking only a few of the many options.
So, it’s taken us a while to get to Delaney’s, which has very much a ‘pubby’ pub feel, but it was worth the wait. There’s a wonderful fireplace for our current season, and a large back garden for less-chilly temperatures (though it is also heated); it is truly a pub that caters to the ever-changing weather – just mind the suit of armour by the back door. While the building was built as a house around 1800, it’s been a pub since the 1880s, and it’s very much a family-run pub.
Indeed, it has the kind of ‘neighbourhood pub’ feel you get in many places around town. Delaney’s doesn’t have the slightly-faded grandeur of some of the high Victorian pubs like The Long Hall or The Hut, but it has a warm welcome and plenty of books for those chill solo pints. Local independent beer is represented by Whiplash and Trouble, and there’s food if you’re peckish, too. There is the customary Guinness, but also Beamish, Harp and Heineken/Beavertown’s Neck Oil, whose ubiquity in Dublin seems to be increasing in inverse proportion to its quality…but here we are, that’s on Heineken, not the pub.
Granted, this is not a spot that you’ll be bringing the kids, but there are plenty of other places around nearby that do welcome them; if you’re on the hunt for an afternoon or evening out alone or with your fellow grownups, you can catch the sport or relax with a local pint at Delaney’s.
Where: 83 King St N, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07 PF51
Access from the city centre: Buses 23, 24, 37, 39, 39A, 70, Luas Red Line, 27ish minute walk
Food: Pub grub
Sport: Sports galore
TVs: All around
Music: Classic rock vibes
Family-friendliness: No kids here
Pub-crawl-ability: High – The Cobblestone, Bonobo and The King’s Inn are all in the immediate area, with Walsh’s, The Belfry, L. Mulligan. Grocer, Hynes’ Bar, The Barber’s Bar and The Glimmer Man in Stoneybatter, and Fidelity and Frank Ryan’s not much further on…plus, all of Capel Street, too…
Local sites of note: Lighthouse Cinema, Jameson Distillery, St Michan’s Church, TUD Grangegorman
Haunted: The suit of armour looks far too recent to be haunted
Other notes: Main floor toilets
Socials: Instagram
Staying on 
Inside, it can be absolutely packed at this time of year, both with decorations (similar to 
But The Hole in the Wall is a pub for life, not just for Christmas – there are also running and cycling clubs based here, and it’s a handy spot if you happen to be on this side of the Phoenix Park (though you’d have 
Dublin – indeed, Ireland – is not over-endowed with glorious (or even ‘fine’) train stations. Having recently 
The staff were also friendly and welcoming – how many pubs would put on the ‘Airwolf’ theme when asked to do so (not, it must be said, by us, but we did enjoy it)? And while it’s true that this part of Dublin still has a bit of a ‘reputation,’ something we’ve discussed in our entry on 
We’ll say up front that we are very much not night owls.
It’s once again worth stating, though, that it’s entirely possible that we’re not the target demographic, and that the real action begins after, say, 9 pm…by which point, we’re generally in pajamas. In this particular instance, we wanted to continue to celebrate the footy win, and so hopped back across the street to 
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 
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