40) McNeill's, J. of Capel Street, D1
An array of musical instruments on display in the window are testimony to the building's past life as a music shop. ‘Quality second hand instruments. Banjos, fiddles, flutes, concertinas’ is written on the sign under the window. To this day they keep up a music theme with traditional Irish music sessions 6 nights a week. As for its current incarnation as a pub – huzzah, they serve Beamish! Once known for being among the best value in Dublin for pints before a certain hour of the day, sadly long since abandoned. The Beamish bonds at €4.70 and is poured from one of the biggest Beamish taps we’ve seen so far.
The pub has an old-world feel (established in 1834) despite some recent renovations which include a small heated smoking area in the back. A roaring turf fire makes for a pretty picture - so pretty in fact, we returned on a wet day in November 2019 to be warmed and entertained by the blaze. Back in 2016 on a deep and biting winter’s day we were heading up the quays to the Chancery Inn. So bitter was the cold and so unprepared were we that day, that Sam Coll finally waved an off-white flag via handkerchief and cried ‘fuck the light, I want the warmth!’ Thus we found the nearest pub which was McNeill’s of Capel Street [1] whose feverous fire was a deep delight. A younger barman keeps it well maintained, feeding it with logs and coal. When an older acrimonious baldy barman clocks in he neglects it entirely, too busy is he chatting with a piddling row of pissheads at the bar.
Very much a local’s local, somewhat let down by rising prices and another surly barman (somewhat of a trend here) who picks favourites and ignores the rest. Boo, hiss! An unusual choice of colour and pattern decorate the walls which have an uncanny resemblance to the prison cells of the hunger strikers when they resorted to smearing their own feces in protest. A new art colour for our Irish publicans: shitsmear. You can almost smell it, can’t you?
The Cell (left), The Pub (right)
Update as of July 2021: This pub is no longer serving the beauty that is Beamish. It’s customers are being denied the delicious beverage because (and this came straight from the stable) the bar manager had ‘a row with the rep.’ More boos, more hisses!
Update as of December 2023: The tide is turning. The row might have been rifted. And we’d like to think our modest bit of online propaganda might have helped. For Beamish is now back and bigger than ever in McNeill’s of Capel Street! Though nowadays it vends for €6:20, which might deter those of us on a bit of a budget. Still worth it for the glorious fire.
The countenance of enticement, pissed/pissed off, or both?
FOOTNOTE
[1] Further down on Capel Street sits a sorry new pub with an outstanding name: The Virgin Mary - so called, because it’s Ireland’s first (and hopefully last) non-alcoholic pub. Just down from The Virgin Mary is another pub not worth visiting called The Black Sheep – so called because it refuses to sell Guinness or Beamish or anything that isn’t of the smelly craft beer variety. If a pint of ‘Fresh Prince of Kildare,’ a ‘Peanut Butter Milk Stout’ and a game of Jenga is your thing, then this shithole is for you, and you probably deserve it! Snake a little further down Capel Street to find the Paddle & Peel - yet another pub not worthy of an entry on our long list. (As mentioned previously, this ‘no Guinness’ phenomenon is nothing new). What the Black Sheep and the Paddle & Peel have in common is that they are both owned by the awful Galway Bay Brewery. Other pubs to avoid from this Brewery include: The Beer Market, Alfie Byrne’s, Against the Grain, The Brew Dock, The 108, The Gasworks.
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