South Dublin

by Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

  Ron Black's

  With its high ceilings, marble bar counters, dark-wood-panelled walls and off-white furnishings, Ron Black's on Dawson Street resembles London or New York at the height of the 1980s yuppie boom. The main bar gets very crowded on Friday and Saturday nights, but the atmosphere is never unpleasant – it's rather like being trapped in a lift with a bunch of models. They drink Champagne in here like it comes out of the tap. The regular crowd are thirty-something professionals, posers who've never had time for a relationship and gangs of girls on a night out.

  Cafe en Seine

  For years Café en Seine was a pub out of its time; it was Celtic Tiger years before there was a Tiger. In 2002 it was given an opulent, Art Deco make-over with a fin-de-siècle French theme. The regulars took one look at the Louis XIVth bust, the French hotel lift, grand piano, brass chandeliers and the glass atrium filled with 40-ft trees and rechristened it Café Insane. It was like going on the piss in the Louvre. The management stuck with that Continental café style, and the sound of ringing tills seven days and nights a week explains why it's now referred to simply as Seine. Southsiders love it for its faux sophistication, extortionate prices and clientele who are not so much the bold and the beautiful as the vain and the vacuous. A great spot.

  Ba Mizu

  A river runs through it – quite literally, actually. The River Poddle, a tributary of the Liffey, flows underneath this trendy pub at the back of the Powerscourt Townhouse Shopping Centre and is visible through a series of glass panels set into the floor. There's a lot more to ogle than that, though. Fitted out in dark pine and stone, with plenty of dimly lit, private snugs in which to hide, ‘Miz’ is stacked wall to wall with ridiculously good-looking after-work types.

  Cocoon

  The former Formula One star Eddie Irvine owns this place, and it's just a shame it contains nothing of his stellar charisma. The door policy tends to favour beauty over brains, cut-glass accents over personality and smart-casual dress to the exclusion of just about any other look. The result is possibly the most uptight bar in town, where beautiful strangers gather to studiously ignore each other. The women – mainly hair stylists from Toni & Guy – strut around with sulky pouts they imagine look good against the killer background rock score. The men stare at them with the intensity of serial killers, admiring them but not wanting to give them the pleasure of being chatted up. The music might be the best available anywhere in Dublin, but this is a pub that needs a stiff drink and a good seeing-to.

  The Bailey

  Sink a Slow Cosmopolitan and see the new, flush Ireland reflected in chrome and glass. The Bailey is a paradise for Prada-clad poseurs. Even the legal and financial investment types who pack the place out on a Friday night are refreshingly superficial. On summer evenings the crowd tends to spill out onto South William Street with their drinks, and the obnoxious laughter can be heard as far away as Grafton Street. On Saturdays it tends to attract a transient professional crowd, enjoying whistle-stop cocktails on the way to somewhere even more expensive.

  Dakota Bar

  This place gets as full and sweaty as a cattle truck, but the ambience, the decorative lounge staff and the uncharacteristically friendly crowd of Southsiders it attracts make the cowpen atmosphere more than bearable. With its great music and personable clientele, Dakota lacks the sterility and soullessness it would need to be taken to many South Dublin hearts, but nonetheless it remains one of the best venues in town to chat up good-looking birds. A word of warning, though: the women in here tend to be smart, many of them Arts students, so you might need more than your usual grab-bag of chat-up lines, such as: ‘Do you sleep on your stomach? Can I?’

  SPY

  The Passionfruit Martinis and the pulsating R ‘n’ B, funk and jazz tunes are just two of the reasons this club has become so popular; the fact that Justin Timberlake once appeared here are most of the others. The door staff will extend you a traditional South Dublin welcome, in other words they'll tell you they don't know your face, but will eventually let you in, once they've established that you're not muck. The décor is impressive, from the stone entrance archway originally designed for coaches to the high ceilings and chandeliers. The music is excellent, the prices reassuringly expensive and the clientele impervious to your chatter unless you happen to drive a Ferrari.

  The Morrison Hotel

  What do you do if you want to build a shrine to that very South Dublin notion that image and appearance are everything? Easy – you have one of the world's most famous couturiers plan it for you. John Rocha designed this Arctic-cool hotel bar, taking unfussy minimalism as his motivation and his muse. If Ikea fitted out airport lounges, they would look and feel a lot like this. Dark-oak furnishings and cream leather sofas make it the ideal place to read The Irish Times property supplement during the day, and at night to pull a woman who works in ‘morkeshing’.

  Searson's

  One of the few pubs in South Dublin that hasn't disappeared up its own ‘orse’, and yet many locals are prepared to forgive it. Its location on Baggot Street – a brisk walk away from Lansdowne Road – has made it a popular hangout for rugby types who want to avoid the stuffiness of other, traditional match-day venues. Searson's has steadfastly resisted the temptation to go trendy or morph into a superpub. ‘What's a nice pub like you doing in a place like this?’ you might ask.

  A WORD FROM ROSS

  Want to know how we Celtic Tiger cubs are slaking our thirst of a Friday evening? With the most expensive cocktail in Ireland, of course. It's called Minted and you get them in the Mint Bor in the Westin on, like, Westmoreland Street. It's basically a Vanilla-chocolate Martini, roysh, that's made from vanilla-infused vodka, 200-year-old cognac and actual flakes of, like, 23-carat gold. It's served in a glass of designer crystal, with chocolate truffles on the side.

  How much does a Minted cost? Well, if you have to ask, you can't afford one. But, since you did, we're talking €500 each. Basically, if a bird asks you for one of them, you'd want a signed guarantee of your Nat King first.

  THE LOCAL DROP

  Heino. Ken. Special K. Whatever you choose to call it, there's no disputing that Heineken is South Dublin's favourite drink, enjoyed by everyone from groups of goys watching the rugby in Kielys of Donnybrook to groups of goys on the ‘total lash’ in Ron Black's or Café en Seine.

  Heineken is a pale lager that contains hops, yeast and barley, and is 5 per cent alcohol by volume. What may come as a surprise to many is that this delicious drink originates not in South Dublin but in Holland, where the original Heineken Brewery (Heineken Brouwerijen) was established by Gerard Adriaan Heineken in 1863. Today, the company brews 121.8 million hectolitres of beer per year, most of which will eventually be drunk in South Dublin.

  For its sheer enterprise, the Heineken company is a role model for Ireland's young go-getter generation, who always have one eye on the main chance. When Prohibition was ended in America, the first shipment of beer landed legally on its shores came from Heineken – just seventy-two hours after the law was repealed.

  In more recent times the company has changed the traditional Heineken logo, considering the old design too formal for its ‘big fun’ beer. A decision was taken to tilt the three Es in the company name approximately 10° to the left, to make it look like the letters were laughing. There is no evidence to suggest this move has resulted in increased sales, but it did persuade an entire generation of young South Dubliners that there was easy money to be made in ‘morkeshing’.

  A WORD FROM OISINN

  What is the deal with birds and cocktails?

  As in, why do they only want them when you're getting the round in? Seriously, when they're paying it's like, ‘just a Bacordi Breezer’, or ‘just a vodka and slimline tonic’. When you're paying they're suddenly reaching for the menu and a focking world of choice is opening up in front of them.

  I took this bird, Muireann, out a while back. She looked like Joey out of Dawson's Creek, no, sorry, Joey out of Friends. She'
s basically an ugly girl who'd make a good-looking bloke, we're talking really offensive-looking, in other words, right up my street.

  So I take her to the Ice Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel, obviously trying to impress her. We sit in a quiet corner and she makes a grab for the cocktail menu and the next thing I know she's running her finger down the list, looking for the most expensive one. Anyway, she asks for a Top Shelf Mojito, which was nearly fifteen bills, then switches to Sunburn Martinis because she was a focking fiend for the Stoli. Then she works her way through, in the following order, a Singapore Sling, a Mangotini, a Razmopolitan, a Cosmopolitan, a Raspberry Russian and a D4 Swinger – and I swear to God, not one of those focking drinks touched the side of her throat on the way down. I'm not scabby or anything, but this is at, like, €12.50 a pop.

  Eventually, her bladder's crying for mercy and she focks off to the TK Maxx, after telling me to get her another drink while she was gone.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said, bracing myself.

  ‘A cocktail,’ she said. ‘Surprise me.’

  So I did. I got her a prawn cocktail, with Marie Rose horseradish sauce. It was there waiting for her when she came back from the can. I wasn't.

  Coffee

  The Irish are known the world over as a nation of tea-drinkers. Difficult as it is to believe now, twenty years ago there were only two types of coffee available in Ireland – instant or none at all. Now the country is awash with speciality coffee houses, where you can kick back in a big, comfy leather armchair and enjoy a grande skinny no-fun latte, or just the guilty indulgence of ordering five cappuccinos while a long queue of people waits to be served, then paying for them with a credit card.

  For centuries coffee has oiled the wheels of revolution across the globe. The Boston Tea Party was planned at the Green Dragon coffee house, and it was at the Café Foy in Paris that Desmoulins jumped on top of a table and whipped the crowd into the revolutionary froth that resulted in the storming of the Bastille two days later. In Argentina, the overthrow of military juntas has been plotted over double-strength espressos in the famous Café Tortoni in Buenos Aires. Napoleon extolled the joys of black coffee and the ‘unusual force’ it gave him, while Beethoven, Göethe and Balzac found it an indispensable aid to creativity.

  Coffee has a long history of inciting passion and stimulating creativity, and in much the same tradition South Dubliners will often be seen whiling away an afternoon over a grande white chocolate mocha or a medio decaf Americano with whip, and engaging in loud discussions about the volume of traffic on the Rock Road, or how much their houses have increased in value in the time it's taken their coffee to cool, or even pointlessly tapping the keys of an iBook.

  Coffee is a language unto itself, and visitors should make sure to learn at least a few phrases. If, for instance, someone asked you for a tall skinny sleeper with whip, would you return with a six foot three, underweight Al Qaeda operative with an S&M fetish instead of a decaf latte with two shots of espresso, low-fat milk and whipped cream? It's a more common mistake than you might imagine.

  In a few short years, coffee has succeeded in turning the English language on its head. Most baristas – or professional ‘coffee chefs’ – speak a kind of American corporate patois that is almost impossible to understand. Adding to the confusion is the fact that most of the big coffee chains have their own exclusive vocabulary. Ask for a harmless split wet mocca with wings in Starbucks, for instance, and you'll be met either by a blank look from the barista or by a member of the shop's security staff who will conduct you off the premises.

  A Basic Guide to Speaking Coffee

  The essential guide below gives you some of the most common words and phrases, what they mean and where they'll be understood.

  Phrase Meaning Where understood

  Americano An espresso with half a pint of water added to it – especially for Americans who can't take it Italian-style. Everywhere

  Angelico White chocolate mix with steamed milk, topped with Bourneville chocolate flakes. Café Java

  Brew Regular, fully brewed coffee. West Coast Coffee

  Caffé Coffee. Starbucks

  Caffé Misto Half brewed coffee, half steamed milk. Starbucks

  Cartado Double espresso with hot milk and foam. West Coast Coffee

  Chiller An iced cappuccino. Café Java

  Doppio A double espresso. Costa

  Dry Extra foam. Insomnia

  Espresso con Single espresso with Panna Café Java whipped cream.

  Espresso Ice-cap Iced coffee. Insomnia

  Frap An ice-blended coffee. Starbucks

  Frappe An iced coffee. Café Sol

  Frappé An iced coffee. West Coast Coffee

  Frescato A type of iced coffee. Costa

  Harmless Low-fat and decaffeinated. Insomnia

  LightNote A smooth and delicate blend of coffee with a clean finish. Starbucks

  Macchiato Foamed milk, espresso, vanilla and buttery caramel. Starbucks

  Mallowchino Single espresso in a cup filled with cream and steamed milk and topped with marshmallows and Bourneville chocolate flakes. Café Java

  Miscela An espresso blend with six parts Arabica beans and one part robusta. Costa

  Mollotina Single espresso mixed with unsweetened chocolate. Café Java

  No fun Decaffeinated. Insomnia

  Ristretto A very short, sharp espresso. Costa

  Skinny Made with low-fat milk. Insomnia

  Split Half the caffeine. Insomnia

  Tazo A blend of premium green tea. Starbucks

  Wet Extra steamed milk. Insomnia

  White Angel White chocolate with steamed milk. Insomnia

  Wild With whipped cream. Insomnia

  With Wings To go. Insomnia

  SIZE DOES MATTER!

  One of the most important things to remember when ordering coffee in South Dublin is that there is no equivalent for the word ‘small’. Even in a shop where the coffee is served in cups of three equally proportionate sizes, remember you have entered into an Alice in Wonderland world where small is big and big is bloody enormous. If you're ordering a small coffee in Insomnia or West Coast, for instance, you must ask for a tall coffee. In both stores a grande is a large coffee, though a grande is only a medium in Starbucks, where the biggest size is a venti – the Italian word for wheelie bin.

  Confused? This short guide to the sizes used by the best-known chains should help you order your coffee successfully, without being reduced to a gibbering wreck or punching the barista in the face:

  Small Medium Large

  Starbucks Tall Grande Venti

  Café Java Tall – Grande

  Café Sol Short Tall Grande

  Insomnia Tall – Grande

  Costa Primo Medio Massimo

  West Coast Tall – Grande

  Getting Around

  South Dubliners love their cars, which goes some way towards explaining why traffic congestion is worse here than it is in Tokyo, London or Mexico City. The roads are particularly clogged early in the morning when, in addition to the regular commuter traffic, thousands of Southside mummies drive their perfectly able-bodied

  children to school. Motorists will likely experience gridlock in the middle of the morning, too, when many Southside mummies go to meet ‘the girls’ for coffee, and again in the mid-afternoon, when they're out and about again to collect their pampered children from school. Rush hour begins shortly afterwards. If you are determined to drive in South Dublin, it's advised that you do so between midnight and 5 am, when there is usually a lull in the traffic flow.

  An alternative is to use public transport, though visitors should be warned that the main suburban rail route, as well as most bus routes, pass through working-class areas, and you may find some of the images you'll see distressing, including women in ski-pants sitting on walls, smoking.

  The Dart is a train service that follows the South Dublin coastline from Bray to Howth and carries tens of thousands of commuters from the suburbs i
nto the City Centre every day. The route affords passengers some of the most breathtaking views to be had anywhere in Europe, including Sandymount Strand and the magnificent Killiney Bay. Bear in mind, however, that there are no first-class carriages on board and inquiries to Iarnród Éireann staff about the availability of toilet facilities may be met with a blunt, ‘Where do you think you are – the fooken Orient Express?’

  North of the Liffey there's rather less to look at as the train traces a route through areas of Dickensian poverty, such as Harmonstown and Kilbarrack, where horses go up and down in the lifts of the local flats all day, just like in a Roddy Doyle film.

  Those intrepid souls who are prepared to stay on for the entire hour-long journey, running the risk of being robbed at knifepoint, will notice the way the name of the service changes according to local dialects. In the well-off North Dublin suburbs of Howth, Sutton and Bayside, it's known as ‘the Dort’. As it passes through Kilbarrack, Killester and Harmonstown on its way to the City Centre, it becomes ‘de Deert’. When it crosses the Liffey, skirting the coast of Dublin 4, the vowel sound becomes softer again and it sounds more like ‘the Doort’. Through Glenageary, Dalkey and Killiney, it becomes ‘the Doorsh’. When it reaches Shankill, it's ‘de fooken trayin’, and by the time it reaches Bray, it's just something people throw stones at.