310) The Silver Penny (J.D. Wetherspoon) of Abbey Street Lower, D1

An endless amphitheatre selling junk food and cheap booze. For a great many, this is the pub they’ve all been waiting for. For a great many more, Wetherspoons is about as welcome as a shoestone. In a previous life this building was the head office of the main Dublin Savings Bank, hence its current name. The only seats worth warming are upstairs to the right where there’s a glass section looking out over Abbey Street. A pint of some unknown lager can be purchased for as little as €2.95.

In a shrewd business move for Beamish it has elbowed its way onto the menu for only €3.45 a pint. To our knowledge this is the cheapest pint of Beamish in Dublin [1]. But how thy cheers must turn to weeping, for this residence is so far removed from a traditional Irish pub that it shouldn’t even count as one. The atmosphere is best described as something between that of a busy airport bar, a Burger King restaurant, and an accident & emergency room. Patrons are of a mixed age and many are morbidly obese - there only to take advantage of the cheapest of fast food. Bar service seems deliberately slothful.

Happy are we to see a dormant building finally put to use, but sorry are we to see the beast that is Wetherspoons sprout yet another tentacle to choke the dying local brand of bar. We will certainly not be back, not even for a bargain Beamish, especially when the wonderful Flowing Tide is in spitting distance.

FOOTNOTE

[1] Unless one goes all the way to the Forty Foot in Dun Laoghaire, another Wetherspoons atrocity that is redeemed in the summertime by its pristine view of the scrotum-tightening sea, whose Beamish vends at a shocking (and dangerously alluring) two euros and ninety five cents. Off-license prices, indeed.

Stupid genius drinks more to save more only to spend it all on pizza and chips

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