Regular readers know that we tend to keep north of the Liffey, or else head more toward The Liberties when we must cross the river. However, we had occasion to be in the area on a weekday afternoon, and so finally made it a priority to call in to O’Donoghue’s – a pub we’ve had a few requests to cover.
Now, while it’s been on the list for a while, we’ve not made it in for a few reasons – not just our general laziness when it comes to heading south. We tend to avoid the more ‘touristy’ areas of town, not only because of the price of a pint in them (though we’re not quite talking Temple Bar pricing here), but because there also tends to be less going on in terms of food and beer selection in a lot of the pubs that pop up on the usual tourist trail recommendation lists. Add in live trad to the equation, and it can be a potent mix that signals ‘tourists only!’ – a combination most keenly felt in many of the pubs in Temple Bar, but that also applies to places like The Brazen Head. And on a recent walk past, the specific tunes and crowd spilling out of O’Donoghue’s that evening seemed to be, well, that.
However, our midweek daytime visit was quite a different affair, and all to the good. Both the interior and the large beer garden were calm, though not empty – as we write this, it is Cheltenham week, and that tends to mean fairly full Old Man Pubs – the resulting crowd was a good mix of locals and visiting Yorkshiremen, most with an interest in the racing. It was also encouraging to see Lucky Pale Ale from Trouble on tap; so many of the ‘must-visit’ pubs here in Dublin – notably Toner’s, just across the street – only have Guinness and/or Heineken products, so seeing at least one local independent beer makes things much more interesting for us.
And the music heritage at O’Donoghue’s is a very real aspect of the appeal; The Dubliners are forever associated with it, and they are looking at you from a range of portraits and photos around the pub. The dark, scuffed (but not uncomfortable) wooden furniture adds to the atmosphere, and while it’s not as large and maze-like as its neighbour across the street, it’s still a much larger pub than you’d guess from the outside. And although the building may not be quite as old as claimed, it’s certainly in the general Georgian ballpark. But it’s the pub’s association with trad music over the last half century that makes it unique. And, like The Cobblestone, it still has a reputation for drawing trad musicians and fans from near and far – it’s not the frequently diddley-eye mix of tunes aimed only at tourists you get in certain quarters.
That said, we are more likely to take ourselves to The Cobblestone or Dudley’s if we’re in the mood for music and pints, but that’s more a function of proximity (and beer selection) than anything else. We can certainly see why O’Donoghue’s is still a real destination for trad, for visitors and locals alike, even if we don’t get down that way particularly often.
No Temple Bar vibes here!
Where: 15 Merrion Row, Dublin
Access from the city centre: Stephen’s Green is just around the corner
Food: Crisps
Sport: Rugby, horse racing, etc…
TVs: Screens both inside and out for the sport
Music: Live trad every night
Family-friendliness: More of a grownup spot, but children/families are welcome to stay in the guest rooms – no kids after 9 pm in the bar area, though, as standard elsewhere
Pub-crawl-ability: Medium-High – Toner’s, McGrattan's, Kennedy's and Doheny & Nesbitt are all very close, though we like to head further on up toward Tapped, Cassidy’s, Bowes or The Palace Bar
Local sites of note: Huguenot Cemetery, Little Museum of Dublin, St Stephen's Green, Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square, Royal Hibernian Academy, Oireachtas, National Library of Ireland, National Museum of Ireland (Archaeology and The Dead Zoo), National Gallery of Ireland…etc.
Haunted: A strange lack of spooky tales…
Other notes: Main floor toilets
Socials: Instagram, Facebook
Although Dublin has no shortage of pubs 
We’ll start 
There’s a folk club upstairs at 
And if you’re looking for up-and-coming local bands or established touring acts, there are plenty of pubs that also serve as music venues. Whelan’s, 
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 
Until a little over a decade ago, 
And while it can be a bit rough around the edges, likely needing a few coats of paint and some repairs here and there (not to mention having slightly-infamous toilets), that’s part of the charm. Yes, it would be nice if some of the derelict buildings surrounding The Cobblestone were used for, say, housing, but it really does feel like a landmark as-is.
Dublin excels at 
There’s a warm welcome, and not one, but two local independent beers offerings: Hope and O’Hara’s are always well-kept here. The bar serves two separate sections, each with their own respective snugs and other seating, and there are lots of little corners to duck into if you’re looking for that quiet solo pint. And it’s interesting to note that while everything you see now is very much hearkening back to the late 19th century, this is, in fact, an older pub – the original building(s) is/are Georgian, and its first license 
Our one knock on many Old Man Pubs is that they rarely offer any beers beyond the usual Guinness and Heineken (though to be fair, it’s usually an excellent Guinness from scrupulously clean tap lines), but as mentioned above, at Gaffney’s, there is good support for other choices, plus Beamish as another stout option. This beer selection, combined with the attractive interior, might just make it the perfect Dublin Old Man Pub.
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.
Last week, we asked whether 
The pub has been here since the 1850s, and in the Hedigan family since 1904, and you can’t miss their name in neon, either. Of course, like so many pubs along this route, it’s name-checked in Ulysses, and has a useful write-up 
Well, there have been proposals to 
We are back this week with a ‘request pub’ – one that’s much further north than our more common north-of-the-Liffey-but-still-pretty-central stomping grounds. We’re heading out of Dublin City proper to Howth; it’s an easy trip on the DART, but a bit of a pain if, for example, you needed Dublin Bus to deposit you to a nearby spot at a predetermined time. Dublin Bus is not always especially good at the concept of ‘on time’ (but it’s pretty great on ghost buses), so the journey in this general direction involved more taxis than I typically take in a 6-month period, but we got there in the end. Our (eventual) destination was 
I’d recently had an exchange on the socials lamenting the lack of railway station bars in Ireland, and while we have nothing here quite like the small-but-mighty 
We enjoyed excellent food and service when we stopped in, which isn’t necessarily a given in some pubs mid-week in the middle of the afternoon (hardly a fruitful time for most), so it was much appreciated. There is outdoor seating as well around both ends of the pub, but we kept to the more dimly-lit interior on a lovely sunny afternoon. Having offspring who actively avoid the sun may be odd to others, but hey, at least their vampiric ways are preventing long-term sun damage, and the pub interior really is lovely, all stone and dark wood.
While our stats here show that you seem to be extremely interested in 
Of course, Walsh’s is far from new, as it’s been trading on this corner since 1826, so it’s coming up on two centuries in business. One wonders if there is to be an epic celebration next year…but back to the pub itself. It’s got a beautiful mix of stained glass and dark wood, cosy nooks and a fantastic snug…really, it’s quite close to the Platonic ideal of a late-19th century Dublin pub (albeit with televisions for the footy), so its recent restoration work has been well-planned and executed. The look and feel is certainly closer to the end of the 19th century than the beginning, but that’s no critique. And while it is best-known for its Guinness, they also serve Beamish, and there are also fresh lines of Trouble’s Ambush and Kinnegar’s Scraggy Bay – it made an ideal stopping-off point for my traditional 
And Walsh’s has another point or two in its favour: it has the full-on Victorian pub splendour, without the crush of tourists you can get at The Long Hall, and it has more variety on offer, drinks-wise, than 
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