Dublin – Paddle and Peel

We had enjoyed the drinks offering at the Galway Bay Brewery operated Against the Grain on Friday evening, so our plan for Saturday’s meal was to book a table at the Paddle and Peel, which the company also runs. There was the danger that it might be necessary to actually phone the pub or speak to them, so I decided Liam would be best at doing that.

We arrived to a fairly empty pub, although it was Saturday afternoon and I imagine things hadn’t quite started to warm up yet. The pub had an on-trend feel to it, all modern and comfortable.

There was an additional seating area to the rear of the pub, which was previously the Beer House before the Galway Bay Brewery took it over. It seems from looking at older photos that it has been relatively extensively modernised, although the downstairs toilets appear to have been excluded from that work.

Always good to see a chalkboard as it’s a sign of a regularly changing beer list, but the beers were also easy to find on the pub’s web-site and there were QR codes on the table to access it on-line. There’s a lack of guest beers there though, the selection felt more what I’d expect to find in a brewery’s tap room than in a pub such as this.

I had tried the brewery’s darker options the night before, so this time went for three lighter beers, which are from left to right the Full Sail, the Althea and the Bay Ale, all from Galway Bay Brewery. The Althea was perhaps the best here with a depth of flavour from the variety of hops used, with the Bay Ale being perhaps slightly past its best.

The Diavola pizza, with a huge heap of green stuff dumped on top. I initially wasn’t delighted as the cheese was a bit,well, cheesy, and I would have preferred mozzarella. However, after grumbling about it briefly to Liam, I decided that I liked it and promptly got through it quickly enough.

Anyway, the prices were reasonable, the pub was clean and I liked the food and drink. There was perhaps nothing exceptional and I would have liked to see more guest beers from other breweries on the menu, but this was still a decent pub and worth visiting. The service was always friendly and this was another one of those pubs that I thought it would be easy to linger in for a few hours, but we had more to explore in the day. Next on the list was the Black Sheep, also operated by the same brewery and just a two-minute walk away.