Peter's Pub

1 Johnson Place, Dublin 2

Did you ever feel like you'd just missed out on your time in the sun?

Six years ago, when I left Dublin to move down to the sticks, Ireland was just beginning to shake off a half decade's trance, rubbing bleary and blinking eyes as the tiger stalked away and wonder - Can all of this have been just a dream?*  All was still labelled and shiny, groomed and new and telling tales of money magicked from the air.  I was a big, bushy-headed, ofttimes beardy bastard, journal and pen stuffed into an old gas-mask manbag, trucking around on an old steel-framed racer.  My mates, all bebrogued and sharp-shirted, regarded me with mild mirth and faint pity.  Money would change hands whenever I locked the bike outside whatever shiny and soulless fleshmart was the latest watering hole based on the cardigan I'd showed up wearing - "Damn it all, he went for the elbow patches!  Next round on me, goys...."

Now, in Dublin, the hairy head is king.  An old Reynold's tubing racer, fixed gear with some sneaky 105 brake calipers stuck on is delectable, not derisory.  Were I to live in Dublin now, I might stand some slim chance of being cool.  Meanwhile, down in the sticks, banging around on the auld bike, I'm still a feckin' eejit.  Plus ça change....

Picture may or may not be an accurate representation of the author....

Thankfully, not everything in Dublin was swept up in the shiny nastiness of the boom.  Peter's Pub has been a staunch bastion of proper boozers through boom and bust.  In fact, it is the birthplace of this blog, if not its spiritual home, the second most sacred site, the Medina of Toasted Specials.  It was here, nearly a decade ago, that the Silent Partner and I found ourselves a little too worse for the wear a little to early in the evening and ordered two toasties that may well have saved our lives.  Wouldn't it be great, we ruminated (as all things seem great in the right company with the right number of pints on board), if someone wrote a guide to pubs serving toasted specials?

A Pint and the Paper - A Solid Plan

Peter's, just like any decent bushy biker, has not bowed to the vagaries of fashion and has to its own self been true.  Thus, it stands still as it did in memory, a bright, convivial open space, more akin to a living room than your traditional tavern.  It's an Irish version of Hemingway's clean, well-lighted space, the white timbered ceilings and white walls bouncing about the light from eight large windows on two sides.  If that all sounds a little too blinding for boozing, it has been cleverly muted with the dark timber sweep of the bar and the dark blues of the benched seating along the walls.  It's an area designed both for cosy, private conversations and more sociable chats:  go there with two buddies and come home with eight.  Mind you, it being the rarest of rare things - a grand warm day - the Yank and I decided to forgo these charms in order to sit and people-watch at the outdoor tables and suck a few pints before the Silent Partner arrived.  Can there be a better way to while away an idle hour?

The Sandwich: 

No Mucking About

And so, to business.  And this sandwich clearly meant business as it arrived, with no airs and graces.  Like a new recruit garda approaching a student nurse in Copper Faced Jacks, this sandwich knew the job it had to do and wasn't about to take any prisoners in getting it done.  Halved, served flat on the side-plate, knife anchoring a covering napkin against any errant gust of wind, this was a triumph of function over form.  The only concession to daintiness, if it were even that, were the two condiment pots that arrived in tandem; mellowing mayonnaise and blow-your-head-off English mustard.  "You do not eat with your eyes," this sandwich stated stridently, "you eat with your gob.  Now get on with it."

Laid Bare in all its Glory

This was a drinking man's sandwich, perfectly evolved to fit its evolutionary niche, to help a body walk the razor's edge between sobriety and debauch, to bring a man back from the brink.  All the basics were present and correct - a thin slice of brown (slightly controversial to make that decision unilaterally), but well toasted to have crunch yield to softness, ham and tomatoes in fine order if unremarkable, a sliced cheese leaving the slightest hint of margarine on the palate.  But an unlikely hero arose to elevate this sandwich from the mundane, distinguishing it from others of its ilk that yearn to be something else, that never embrace their destiny as a Toasted Special.  Onion.  Punchy, white onion, just about onside of raw, piercing through stout-fur of the tongue, sending its vapours up the nasal passages to lend acuity to the beer-befuddled brain.  Do or do not (go home), it says, there is no try.  In case I'd missed the message, I slathered mustard on the second half (well, it was there) and properly lifted the scalp off myself.

On Tap:
I was commemorating the birth of the idea with the Silent Partner, the co-founder.  It had to be Guinness.  And, as ever, a smashing pint of the stuff.  Amusingly, the barman thought I might enjoy a shamrock on top - a mistake, to his credit, he only made once.  The Yank went for a pint of O'Hara's Stout which they have on tap here, along with an impressive range of draught beers, including Galway Hooker, Pilsner Urquell, Paulaner, Rowers Red Ale, Carrig Irish Lager, Grolsch and Peroni.  There's a few here that have yet to be subjected to the rigours of review, a situation I'll strive to rectify.
To sound a rare negative note:  €5.20 for a pint of stout!  I loved living in Dublin, but some things I don't miss.  You could have bought me dinner first....

On the Stereo:
Nothing.  Well, we were outside, so our soundscape was of fair voice and footfall, the best of soundtracks to a few afternoon scoops.  But Peter's is a conversation-driven establishment, and no music, however well chosen, should be loud enough to distract from a good chat.

The Verdict:
Peter's Pub.  I like that it's a first name.  It makes sense.  This is supposed to feel like your local, no matter how long you've been living down the country.  You're supposed to feel like you could walk in, strike up a conversation with the barman and feel like you've never been away at all.  And not in a cynical way - it's not a manufactured sense of welcome, a bonhomie designed to open your wallet.  This is a genuine public house, as articulated by someone passionately believes in that function and wants, indeed, to make it a public living room.  It's what all pubs could be if they ignored the vagaries of fashion and embraced the role they were designed to fulfill.

By the way - the stumbling block; skinny jeans.  Still wouldn't have made the grade.  Can't be doing with skinny jeans.  Never mind:  cool looks like so much effort anyway....

*Gratuitous Shakespeare quote:  "and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d / I cried to dream again."  (The Tempest, 3.2.101 - 104)

Roche's Bar

Duncannon, Co. Wexford

Hindsight, as my father is apt to say, is a pain in the arse.

The pitfalls, the wrong turns taken, all obscure when first treading the paths, are laid mercilessly bare in the rear view mirror.  And a fat lot of good it does us to see them in retrospect because, of course, the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

Asking the toughest boy on the yard to kind your lunch money is a great idea.  Right up to the point he realises that there's very little to prevent it becoming his lunch money.  School boy error?  Yet it's found repeated over and over down through history.  For example, the withdrawal of Roman power from Britain left a massive power vacuum.  The native Briton, fearing attack from the Scoti up North and us mad shower across the sea, invited in bands of Angles and Saxons, the playground bullies of the Northern continent, as protection.  Not a great idea, it turns out.  They liked it, they stayed, and the Celtic Britons didn't get much of a look in thereafter.

But why learn from history when we could just repeat it.  When Diarmuid Mac Murrough lost his Leinster kingship, he cast about for a mercenary military force that might be interested in retribution and a bit of recreational violence.  'Sure what harm?' he might have asked himself as he watched Richard Le Gros land his Norman troops in Bannow Bay.  'Sure what could go wrong?'

Hook Lighthouse - it's quite lovely, you know

The Hook Penisula, bounded by Bannow Bay on one side and the broad estuary of the River Suir on the other, has a history inextricably entwined with these invasions.  From Le Gros' march on Waterford from Bannow to Richard II's landing at Passage to the departures of a defeated James and the victorious William from Duncannon Fort following the Battle of the Boyne, Hook Lighthouse (the oldest operational lighthouse in the world) has looked down upon the comings and goings of conquest and beamed out its steady pulse of warning.  Its proximity to our nearest neighbour and the Suir's utility in accessing Waterford City as well as the Nore and Barrow river systems, made this prime real estate in the early years of Norman annexation.  In 1172, Henry II granted large tranches of the peninsula to the Knights Templar, they beloved of Dan Browne fans and Illuminati conspiracy theorists the world over and, not incidentally, founded on that basic flawed premise of asking the tough kid to mind your lunch money.  There remains little physical trace of their stewardship, a lichened gravestone in Templetown bearing their sigil of sword and Agnes Dei, but the whole peninsula remains suffused in a feeling of otherwhere, of not quite Ireland.  The area has a quiet beauty, a still timelessness than belies the ceaseless sweep of weather in the skies above from yonder to elsewhere.

We were making a day of it - the ferry from Passage elevating day-trip to adventure - ducking the weather to dig for treasure at Dollar Bay, finding shelter and scones at Hook Lighthouse, and were thoroughly famished by the time we were driving back through Duncannon.  Finding a parking spot right at the beach, we chanced up around the corner to see what grub might be on the go of a Sunday evening.

Duncannon Strand - looking out by Hook or by Crooke

Roche's Bar is not 50 paces from the strand, and with the weather closing in, we were delighted to get Sprog Mór and Sprog Óg before the heavens opened.  It's a sprawling complex, the bar stretching over four mini-levels as the building climbs to follow the contour of the road outside, with a dedicated restaurant , Sqigl, under the same ownership also attached.  Areas have clearly been knocked through and built on as the business extended.  Crucially, however, great intelligence and sympathy has been brought to those expansions,  and what could have been a vast, open-spaced superpub has been designed and divided to make small, intimate pockets of space allowing a range of proper pub functions to be discharged.  The lowest section, clearly the original bar, is a top quality local watering hole - concrete floor, well worn bar stools and a really fantastic set of old pub shelves behind the bar still being put to full use.  It was well populated this Sunday evening by a good crew of heads who'd watched the hurling (feckin' Cats again...) and were planning the excuses they'd tell their wives for staying out to watch McIlroy win the golf.  Beyond that, a small alcove with a big telly - much coveted for the rugby and soccer, I'd say - and above again, the space opened generously to give a more airy and welcoming feel for the healthy flow of customers coming in for a bite to eat.  Wander a bit more widely and you'll find a well laid-out smoking area if you're fond of the old death-sticks and a nicely contained games area with dartboard and pool table.  More unusually, and as it played out, more usefully, there's a baby changing unit in the Ladies' jax (oh, you may not care now....).  In a trade where all too often people throw money at the walls in the hope that something will stick, it's great to see thought and taste brought to bear in the design of a pub.

There are more questions than answers here....

The Sandwich:

It's fair to say that the staff started racking up the brownie points early doors.  Not every pub is accommodating of a harassed-looking couple dragging a two-year-old and a toddler out of the rain.  The staff at Roche's got us seated, Wi-fi password supplied to unleash Peppa Pig on the eldest and a glass of cordial in his facehole before ever he hit upon the idea of kicking off.  But they were only getting warmed up.  On perusing the menu, I noticed to my chagrin that the toasted special didn't feature, even though I'd copped it advertised outside.  "Oh, it's not on the Sunday menu," quoth the waitress, "but don't worry - I'm sure we can sort you out."  Well played, young lady, well played!

Behold the Ham!

A toasted special duly arrived, and I wasn't to be disappointed.  There were turns of phrase here that mark out the 'pure daycent' (as they'd say in Cork) from the 'quare bad' (as the locals below in the bar would have it).  The ham was real ham, thick slices, hand carved and I suspect cooked in house.  The tomatoes had been upgraded to plum tomatoes (sourced locally), pleasantly ripe and sweet, the onions a fine chop of red onion, a personal preference.  The toasting was very nicely pitched; nicely griddled exterior, good element of compression to the sandwich, the crunch of the exterior giving way to the silky liquid finish of the interior.  This is a well considered, well executed outing, ably supported by a nicely dressed salad and a big portion of very more-ish chips.

But I'm afraid there's a but.  The sandwich was priced at €8.50, which makes it the most expensive toasted special I've road-tested to date.  And we're not on Grafton St. here - this is a small, rural Irish village.  I just can't see the input costs that can justify that price-tag for a toasted sandwich.  Which is a pity:  were I to have paid €6 for this sandwich, I'd be raving about it.

On Tap:

Roche's have it well advertised that they're a member of beoir.org, so a good range of Irish craft beers was to be expected, and indeed there was a great selection of bottled beer to be had.  I was a little disappointed to find there was only one draught option, Whyte Gypsy Blonde Weiss Beer [sic], a very serviceable Hefeweissen from Tipperary, not overly gassy and with a very agreeable citrus finish.  All the regulars were here as well, and I'd be confident that a pub as professional as this will present them all in fairly good order.

On the Stereo:

We're talking middle-of-the-road indie jangliness here - Snow Patrol, Paolo Nuitini, et al.  It's like wearing clean Converse:  you're just about in with the cool gang, but you're not going offend anyone either.  To be fair, the music was only pitched as background noise as it was a pretty big sporting weekend, and that's what most of the punters were in for.

The Verdict:

There's a difference between passion and acumen.  Passion is rule of the heart, decisions made with strong feeling, flashes of genius walking the tightrope of catastrophe.  The results can be wonderful or awful.  Acumen is more cold-blooded and hard-headed.  It makes consistently good decisions, delivers consistently good results.  Acumen can often be excellent, but never inspiring.

Roche's is a very well run pub.  Its staff are friendly and efficient, the design is well thought out and well executed, the food is of a very high standard and very well presented.  There's nothing here to set the heart aflame, but there's a consistently well delivered product that caters very well to the markets it's serving.  And perhaps when you're escaping the rain with your famished family, it's best to let the head rule the heart.

Hackett's of Schull

Main St., Schull, West Cork.

A simple idea, well executed.

Is there anything better than a good idea, well executed?

Opposable thumbs, for example.  Oh, the dolphins and the elephants may be ferocious intelligent creatures, but when it comes to chucking a spear or grasping a fork, you can't beat d'auld opposable thumbs.  I'm sure after another long day of more bloody sushi, Fungi must gaze wistfully in at the tourists in the boats thinking, "If only I had the hands to hold it, I'd murdher a bag of crisps!"

The Toasted Special is, at its heart, a good idea, well executed - a simple sandwich, four humble ingredients, but when well sourced, combined with skill and toasted to sensuous perfection, a thing of beauty.  It's a source of grief to me that such a fine indigenous foodstuff has found itself supplanted on so many pub menus by foreign fare we can't even get grammatically correct (panini is already plural, there's no such thing as 'paninis').

The people of Schull (and specifically a Canadian lady by the name of Camille, if my pub earwigging is to be trusted) had a simple idea not so long ago.  The October Bank Holiday weekend would see an influx of monied classes from the city, down to spend the school break in their holiday homes.  But without street lights and out in the wilds of West Cork, the business of trick or treating would occasion long, lonely walks on narrow, unlit roads.  Hardly ideal.  And so the local dramatic society had the simple idea of staging 'Fright Night' in the town on the night of Samhain.  It can't hurt that even the town's name sounds spooky!

And if this seems a simple idea, good lord have they executed it well.  The entire town turns itself over to a ghoulish cast of characters that prowl the main street, turning local businesses and buildings into houses of horror.  Caged schoolchildren await their grisly fate, deranged cartmen call for the dead of the houses to be brought out and piled high.  In my opinion, when terrified and tearful eight-year-olds have to be consoled by bemused but concerned parents, you've pitched the horror levels just right.  The fear and loathing is subsequently assuaged by plunder in any case  - the local shops hand out all sorts of loot to by now mollified trick-and-treaters.  It is, quite simply, a wonderful celebration of a very ancient festival - it is recommended most highly.


Hackett's is another good idea, executed here with panache.  The face it shows to Main St. is traditional, but crisply painted; a brisk, vibrant red facade set off by a cool, clean cream above.  It's a public statement of intent - what we do here, we do well - and it's telling no lies.  Within is wonderfully stygian, as all good pubs should be; a cool cave in the heights of summer, a cosy nook on a winter's eve.  The roughly flagged floor gives onto a black half-timbered wall topped with ruggedly rendered and whitewashed plaster above.  The wall facing the bar area is dominated by a work-in-progress mural of some skill, depicting a clearly recognisable cast of characters and regulars, some of whose heads could be matched with a few of those floating around during my visit.  The remaining wall decorations comprised of superior quality artwork with a strong emphasis on portraiture, including extensive publicity material for a German photographic exhibition (which left me pondering 'the why?').  And beyond the bar, left through the archway, the most wonderful snug.

Not Quite Hemmingway's Clean, Well-Lighted Place

One of these pictures serves pints....

View from the Snug

The Sandwich:

Hackett's does pub grub, and does it extremely well, I suspect, but didn't have a straight up toasted special on offer.  It was ordered as such, for the barman to clarify that it would be an open sandwich and with Gubbeen cheese - the author had no issue with these modifications, and settled back contentedly with his Irish Times.

A Very Good-Looking Bar Menu

The sandwich made an excellent first impression on arrival, attractively presented with a very appetising salad on the side.  The base of the sandwich was a single but good, thick slice of white artisan loaf.  It hadn't been pre-toasted, so while the underside was crispy and warm, the filling side, and consequently the centre of the sandwich, was somewhat liquid in character - not necessarily a criticism; I was reminded, for some reason, of the silky centre of a very good onion ring.  The tomatoes were better that the usual offenders, the onions a little unusual - a very loose chop which gave long sections of a very mild white onion.  The ham was a little lost to the Gubbeen (of which more anon), and I think the more robust saltiness of bacon, also an option on the menu, would have stood up to the strength of the cheese a little better.  For the cheese was the star of the show, centre stage and bubbling as the sandwich arrived.  Having made the one mile journey from the Gubbeen farm out the road, it had been elevated and celebrated by the kitchen staff, its powerful and slightly acrid flavour dovetailing beautifully with my beer, forcing me to consider how well it would go with another one, suggesting to me how little of a hurry I was in to actually be anywhere else.  Powerful stuff!  The other (rather surprising) star of the show was the salad - a real mixed salad of lambs leaf, cress, rocket and others I couldn't identify (locally grown, or I'm a simian's mum's brother) bulked out by a crisp iceberg base, and brought together with a pleasantly sharp wholegrain mustard dressing.  The entire meal is a great example of what West Cork does so well, delivering locally produced artisan produce with minimum fuss, as if to say "Maybe we should be eating this well all the time."

A Small Slice of Heaven

On Tap:
Only four taps on the bar, which is something I approve of.  Making one of them Becks is a decision I'd question, the others being Murphy's, Guinness and Heineken.  Exhaustive research had been conducted the evening previous into the quality of the Murphy's - not being convinced of the standard of the first pint, I had three more before concluding it was absolutely excellent.  Moreover, it was found to pair very nicely with a wee drop of Bushmills Black - who'd have thought it?  The starring draught beers were very ably supported by a diverse cast of characters in the fridge, and to accompany my toastie and newspaper, I chose a bottle of Howling Gale ale from the Eight Degrees Brewery based out of Ballyhoura.  I was disappointed to find it quite gassy from the bottle, with the hops notes a bit harsh and overpowering at the finish - I'd like to try it from cask at some stage to give it a fair shake.

On the Stereo:
Sometimes the well-worn route is the best way to travel - Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors provided the aural backdrop for my visits.  The volume level was perfectly judged, no impediment to conversation, but not background noise either.  A genuine filler of gaps in conversation, and in many cases a conversation stopper and starter as well.  How often do you get the time to just sit down and listen to some of these tracks that have shaped our soundscape for decades?  Very pleased to find Alabama 3 popping up on occasion as well - 'twas like an old friend had walked in for a drink.

The Verdict:
Dare I say it?  Were I to be back in Hackett's again (and I very much hope I will be), 'twouldn't be the Toasted Special I'd be having.  Not that the sandwich was unpleasant, though it was a little cheffy for my tastes (in toasties, in any case) and a little pricey at €7.  It's more that the rest of the menu looked very inviting, and Hackett's is a good example of something West Cork does extremely well, showcasing top quality local artisan produce in a non-flashy, everyday way.  A nice bowl of hot soup, a daycent pint, a good book and a bit of weather against the windowpane in Hackett's of an afternoon would very much be my idea of a good time.  There's no sense of compromise in here; Hackett's retains the character of top quality pub, but lashes out good-looking, simple, well-prepared food to punters who might find themselves famished.  As the great Van the Man might say, 'Wouldn't it be great if things were like this all the time?'

Many thanks to Dr. Brudder for the use of his Fright Night photos.