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
Our featured Dublin pub this week is one that has been in the ‘much requested’ queue for some time. While we had to make it a flying visit, we finally got to 
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 
This week’s pub isn’t especially Christmassy, nor is it one I frequent, but it is one that appeals to tourists and locals alike, so here we are. The Confession Box’s claim to be the smallest pub in Dublin may not be entirely accurate, but it does have historic bona fides; mixing a bit of fact and myth is almost par for the course in modern pub marketing (indeed, also in historic pub marketing), so we’ll consider it part of the furniture.
But The Confession Box didn’t start out as a pub, and its 
Given the concentration of pubs in this part of town (and easy proximity to the Luas), it’s a good shout to include for a pub crawl; for those not afraid of the north side of the Liffey, there’s something for everyone in this area of Dublin.
The Oval’s most recent refurbishment was only about a year or so ago, and while it feels fresh and tidy, there’s still enough of a patina to give it a feeling of the history of the place; the décor and grillwork have an authentic feel. The pub is divided up into multiple sections, with more of a dining-room feel upstairs, but even within the relatively small main bar area, there are distinct areas to sit and relax, either alone or to spread out with friends. And while you can, of course, have a Guinness and all the other usual big brands, The Oval has two house beers, a pale ale and lager, that are brewed for this and other 
Indeed, every time I’ve stopped it it’s been a good mix of people from all over, either enjoying a pint before heading on to a gig at The Academy or an after-work crowd catching up before catching buses. While it doesn’t have the selection of local independent beers that its neighbour