While it may seem that we rarely venture south of the Liffey (true, really), we recently had occasion to be down in our old Ballsbridge stomping grounds, and so returned to The Bridge 1859 for the first time in quite a while. We last stopped into this beautifully-decorated pub just before we moved out of the area, and enjoyed a last fresh Pilsner Urquell from their gravity tank. This time, the welcome was just as warm, the décor on point, the food excellent – but the beer selection nowadays is, as the kids say, mid. Let’s review.
There has been much local discussion surrounding the launch of Changing Times beer; it’s something of a collaborative effort among a number of pubs, including some heavy hitters like The Long Hall, Doheny & Nesbitt and The Palace Bar. While it’s proclaimed as ‘brewed in Glasnevin,’ it doesn’t seem to have a single pub north of the river serving it, at least, so far. The beers offered so far are a lager (clearly for the Heineken fan), a hazy pale ale (not really sure who it’s aimed at beyond; it feels a bit unkind to say ‘people who don’t like beer,’ but…) and now, a stout. The stout is by far the most drinkable of the three on offer so far, and seems to be the only one served at any kind of ‘discount,’ but again, it’s essentially like a very light Murphy’s versus having much of its own character. It’s one thing to launch a new beer brand, but it’s another to launch it with the kind of ‘meh’ beers that gave early-2000s investor-driven ‘craft beer’ a bad name, especially in a market with comparatively little of the real thing, as it were.
And that may be all well and good for many customers, but these new brews haven’t (mostly) muscled out the usual macro suspects; it’s the ‘good’ beers that have been jettisoned to make space, including – really a loss here – the Pilsner Urquell. Removed from The Bridge’s menu now are Rye River Upstream Pale Ale, Warsteiner lager and, er, Madri. The Madri may be no great loss, but the others are keenly felt (especially if, say, A Friend were really looking forward to a Pilsner Urquell, sighed to make do with a Warsteiner and then realised that the only drinkable lager was Carlsberg). To add insult to injury, the hand-painted panel all about Pilsner Urquell has been partially, but not entirely, covered by a television. Ouch.
And I get it – it’s a pub that largely caters to a rugby crowd (albeit one of all ages – kids are quite welcome here), and so it’s not aiming to be a hangout for people who like good beer, but it did once have good beer, and now it…doesn’t. It feels rather like so many higher-end Irish restaurants do: there may be a well-curated wine list, amazing food and nothing but the most boring macro beers possible. And that’s not to say they should dump Guinness or Carlsberg – I like both Guinness and Carlsberg – but I’d much rather have the option to support other independent local breweries – at least before, there was the Rye River option. And with so many duplicate macro taps, there were plenty of spots to shuffle things around a bit instead of losing the others. Perhaps the most telling part of the visit was that our waitress didn’t even know what Pilsner Urquell was, even though it was painted behind her on the wall. As James once sang, ‘…if I hadn’t seen such riches, I could live with being poor.’
That said, it’s entirely possible that other publicans will see this effort and, perhaps, give another local beer a shot on one of their taps – we’ve previously discussed Four Provinces appearing at The Tolka House – and there are still plenty of usual suspects there for everyone – so let’s hope that some are a bit more open to experimentation. The prices are more likely to suit everyone involved, too.
But again, there are many positives at The Bridge 1859: excellent food, a lovely atmosphere, very cosy seating and attentive service. Shame about the beer – pour one out for the Pilsner Urquell…
Where: 13 Ballsbridge Terrace, Dublin 4, D04 C7K6
Access from the city centre: Buses 4, 7, 7A, 38A, 39, 39A, 70, 120, E1, E2; 35ish minute walk
Food: Gastropub offerings & snacks
Sport: Rugby, football, the usual big event sports
TVs: All around the pub
Music: Veered toward the MOR
Family-friendliness: More-interesting-than-most kids’ menu
Pub-crawl-ability: Low – The Horse Show House is down the road, and a further walk to The Old Spot and The Bath Pub
Local sites of note: RDS, Aviva Stadium, various embassies, National Print Museum
Haunted: Something something Pilsner Urquell…
Other notes: Beautifully-appointed rooms upstairs for private events
Socials: Facebook, Instagram
Sometimes, just sometimes, a fantastic new(ish) pub pops up where you least expect it. Dublin’s Talbot Street has had a lot of publicity 
At that time, the shopfront that is now the pub was The Morris Wallpaper Stores, and the signage from that era has been preserved above the door. The theme continues inside, with framed William Morris wallpaper samples on the exposed brick, giving a mix of industrial chic and cosy early-20th century-pub vibes. There’s a pizza spot toward the back (check for opening hours, as these things evolve) with more communal-styles tables, but the seating in the main bar is much ‘pubbier,’ and very comfortable indeed.
There’s a good mix of the usual Guinness-and-friends offerings, but also a handy Rye River tap, as well as Beamish for the Corkonians in your life. The cocktail list is interesting as well. On our visit, the staff were all wonderful, and the attention to detail that went into the design of the pub is evident. It hits just the right mark of honouring the building’s past without feeling like a theme pub.
While it was likely something akin to a coaching inn in that earlier phase – again, like its not-too-distant neighbour in Drumcondra – having a tourist site spring up nearby in the form of the National Botanic Gardens in the 19th century was a boon to business, similar to the relationship between the nearby 
We kick off our 2025 pub-visiting endeavours with a stop off at 
Its more 
Some of that may also come from its beer selection; there’s the usual Guinness-and-macros lineup (plus Murphy’s), as well as two new taplines from 
It’s been a minute since we’ve been to an entirely new pub, so it was good fun to make it in to 
While much of 
The best news for beer fans is that unlike several of the ex-Galway Bay pubs, we have their core lineup, and there will be other guest beers as well in the future. But you can also bring your Guinness nerds and other macro-beer friends here – they are by no means left out, and there are cocktails as well. On our visit, everything was lovely and fresh (as you might expect) – the Lush and Full Sail were both in excellent form. Food, too, was more varied than the standard menu, or else it’s changed again – either way, the addition of the charcuterie board was most welcome, and the halloumi fries are as good as ever.
In the immortal words of 
There can be a bit of a dark side to going all in on Christmas, though – a pub might attract groups of Twelve Pubs of Christmas revellers. Now, I like a 
Well, as mentioned, they have the ideal backdrop for the social media documentation of their special day – there is no corner of the pub lacking holiday decorations. They can also be sensible by getting a bit of food, and while the beers on offer aren’t terribly adventurous – their own-brand offerings look to be from Franciscan Well, so more or less a small step up from your standard Heineken portfolio plus Guinness, but it does give Beamish stans their fave, too. But The Ginger Man is the kind of place that’s busy no matter what – its proximity to Trinity College means there are always plenty of students and tourists, plus a big after-work crowd. There are likely smaller numbers of JP Donleavy fans coming to see a pub named after his novel, as there are 
Indeed, devilish attachments (literally) continued with a stone ‘devil’ head formerly being affixed to the bridge – though whether the stories or the sculpture came first is open to investigation. In any case, the ‘devil’ has been 
And a lovely beer selection it is, too – there is generous support for local craft beer, with taps from Rascals, Hopfully, Trouble and Kinnegar on recently. The laid-back vibe is not dissimilar to 
But I love having an excuse to go to Arthur’s during the 
Dublin does not, on the whole, have the kind of grand railway station pubs and bars that you might find in the UK or Germany, but it seems 
It’s a bit of a funny spot, The Galway Hooker; the patio outside overlooks the Luas tracks, giving it more of a ‘commuter’ vs ‘real trip’ vibe, but it does afford a nice view of Heuston’s exterior, which is really rather nice by Irish train station standards; it can be a bit too easy to overlook when you’re in a hurry to catch a train. Inside, though, there are multiple options for people-watching, though it’s not as easy as it might be for trainspotting. The entrance from the station concourse only suggests a somewhat-unpromising buffet/carvery experience, but if you press on into the pub interior, a more impressive spectacle awaits.
The colour scheme is dictated by the red-brown (Burnt Sienna?) sails of the model 
But back to the pub itself: The Bull & Castle is very much ‘sleek steakhouse with taxidermy and statuary’ downstairs, and if you’re simply looking for the bar, you need to head up the stairs. But before you do, it’s worth noting that the steak is top-notch; it’s part of the FX Buckley family, and if you are a meat-eater who hasn’t had their steak, well…you should probably get on that, whether at The Bull & Castle or one of their other locations around Dublin. Upstairs, there is also excellent food, but also a more pub-like atmosphere. There are a variety of local craft beer options: on my most recent visit, some Trouble, lots of O’Hara’s choices (also in bottles downstairs), including the house pale ale, The White Hag and others, plus a wider selection of ciders than you typically find in most places around town. It can feel a bit hidden, since you don’t enter into the main bar right from the street as in so many other pubs, but that can add to the charm as well.
And, of course, there’s the aforementioned literary connection and ghost story. Poet