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The Temple Bar

Temple Bar

Tourist tack at its worst? Or best? The Temple Bar is an unashamed transplantation of a New York "Oirish" pub to Dublin. While this may sound like a contradiction in terms, ask yourself how likely you are to find a Pizza hut in Rome.

The problem is though, it all works and, in so far as anything so brazenly tourist-commercial can be, it's all done with incredibly good taste. Some time ago the owners took a small and authentic Irish pub, lovingly preserved it and extended it to about five times the size, including two connected beer gardens and a new bar. Throughout all this they have maintained the ambience and character of the original, skittering the walls with the usual assortment of pub junk and old advertising and employing a range of traditional musicians to entertain the troops with Irish folk standards.

As with the attention to detail everywhere else in the Temple Bar, the music is generally very good - as good a free gig as you'll find anywhere. Add in the "passive amplification" that they make so much of in their advertising (it basically means that the live music is piped everywhere else in the pub, but not so loud that you can't converse) and you have a perfect pub environment - you can go into the music room in the middle of the pub and get involved in the audience or just sit elsewhere and enjoy it as ambient music.

The beer "gardens" or, more properly, courtyards, are enclosed by the rest of the pub. When the smoking ban was introduced it was an easy measure to add retractable awnings to keep off the rain. Because of the way these two courtyards had been designed to integrate with the rest of the pub anyway, this is one place where smokers have no reason to feel literally "left out in the cold".

At busy times this place is packed, largely with tourists but with a fair smattering of locals also. At quiet times, the place is just busy. If you're looking far a packages "Irish Bar" experience, then the Temple Bar is highly recommended. If not, it's still recommended.