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)