1 week Ago By Nicola Bardon
THE owner of one of Ireland’s most famous pubs insists Dublin has done well to keep its dwindling band of iconic boozers. As landmarks continue to fall and businesses close in the capital, Willie Aherne from the Palace Bar on Fleet Street says traditions are being preserved against the odds. He told The Irish Sun: “We’re blessed as a city in Dublin to still have 15 beautiful pubs that date back to the 1800s, the Victorian Dublin pubs.
“When you look at cities across England , how they’re void of places like that, how they destroyed them. “A lot happened here in the 1960s, modernisation was the word, but we’re blessed that we still have them. It is a huge accolade for Dublin.
You get a lot of visitors come to Dublin, and they do come for the craic, but they do come for the good Dublin pubs as well.” The Dublin boozers have joined forces to brew their own beers at the Changing Times Brewery, a €1.8million venture in Glasnevin.
The teams behind it run The Palace, The Long Hall, The Swan, The Bankers, Arthur Maynes in Donnybrook, Devitts, Doheny & Nesbitts, Sheehans, Lemon & Duke, The Bridge 1859, The Blackrock, The Bank, McSorleys, Darkey Kelly’s and The Ferryman. And they have now the added investment from the founder of Drumshanbo Gunpowder Irish Gin, Patrick J Rigney, who joined the brewery as its chairman. They have started with two products on draft — Daydreamer lager and After Hours Pale Ale, admitting they had to do something different to move with the times.
Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh once described the Palace Bar on Fleet Street as the “most wonderful temple of art”. Established in 1823, it sits beside the pubs of Temple Bar and yet many people who drink there are locals. For owner Willie, he said the group felt they “needed to do something different and bring something new to the table.
A different dynamic”. He said: “The majority of the pubs involved are city centre located, so it does give us a good opportunity. You’ve a mixture of tourism, you’ve events in the city, you’ve young students who are willing to try different things.
“So it gave us a better chance than say a rural house, or maybe a suburban house, who are very loyal to their brands. “Without blowing smoke up ourselves, there’s very good houses involved in all of this. When you take in the Long Hall, the Swan, Doheny & Nesbitts, the Bank in College Green, you’ve got some of the finest houses in the city involved.
It brings a whole new dynamic to it all, it’s exciting.” And he said even before they came together to work on Changing Times, the group never felt like rivals. “I wouldn’t necessarily say we are in competition with each other.
When we get visitors, and they ask ‘where do you recommend we can go’, first on my list would be up to Sheehan’s for the stew, or up to the Bank for your breakfast, or a nice whiskey sour...
” Marcus Houlihan runs the Long Hall on South Great George’s Street, a staple of Dublin life since 1766. Bruce Springsteen is a regular there when he is in town and some of the video for Phil Lynott’s Old Town was shot here. Loved by locals and visitors, Marcus said he ”doesn’t take anything for granted”.
He said: “Complacency is not in my vocabulary. People say to me, ‘ah that pub runs itself’. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Ok, it has a long history and a lot of heritage, and there’s a lot of work gone into it. I’m lucky I’ve worked, and I do work, with some of the best bartenders around who are masters of their craft. “People come for the authenticity, that’s what they’re looking for.
They want to know where Irish people socialise. Where are the pubs that are the fabrics of the city? “We’ve been very fortunate. We built up a lot of goodwill over the years, basically by having attentive bartenders, a warm welcome and a friendly atmosphere.
“We look to repeat that every time so there’s a familiarity and that’s where we’ll get repeat business. “The visitors who come again and again to the city will always make it a stop-off point. But I always say to people that are visiting, the fantastic thing about Dublin is you go out the door of the Long Haul and you can go in any direction and I can give you another three, four pubs that you can visit during your stay that are of a similar ilk, a bygone era, if you want to see history and heritage.
” He said he was on board once he heard the team behind the venture included the founder, Shane Long of the Franciscan Well Brewery, and some of his friends in the business . Marcus added: “We believe it is the first time it’s ever been done, certainly in Ireland. But it’s a conversation to be honest with you that’s been going on for years.
We’ve been talking about wouldn’t it be great to have our own beer, to be brewing our own beer. “We do need it. We can’t do what we’ve always done, if that makes sense.
You have to be constantly changing and evolving to meet customers ’ tastes. “Irish drinkers are some of the most discerning drinkers in the world. They know what they like, they know what they don’t, they’re not shy in stressing their opinion.
“I think people in modern Ireland have travelled a lot more because the cost of travel has gone down a lot over the years, and people are experiencing new food, new drinks and they come back and they’re looking for something different. We hope we’ve given them that.” He said having a local brewed beer is something to be proud of.
“It’s great when you can tell tourists this beer is brewed only 20 minutes drive from here, it’s only up the road in Glasnevin.” Willie said his family have seen the good and bad times but they just ‘roll up the sleeves’. He told us: “As a family, we’re here since 1946.
I remember during Covid my father saying to me, he’d gone through some tough times, the interest rate hikes in the late 70s, 80s were off the charts I believe. And then you had the Dublin bombings in town. “Then our friend Covid came along and we had the crash a few years before that.
These challenges come at you every few years. Please God we don’t have those ones again in our lifetime but you have to adapt, get on with things and roll up the sleeves. “There’s no doubt about it, the cost of business has gone up a right notch.
There’s no two ways of looking at that. We don’t have a kitchen here. Some places are very heavily staff reliant, whereas we just do a toasted sandwich — toasted ham and cheese, simple.
“Places that are heavily reliant on the food side of things, they are finding it tough. Between all the extra costs and your labour costs going up, you have to be on the ball on the back room side of things, the office side of things.”.
