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What do you want from an Irish pub? Guinness, sure enough. Kilkenny’s is handy. But it’s good to have a few Irishmen, too. Otherwise all you’ve got is bricks and mortar and the means to get pissed - and you can get that anywhere.
The Dubliner is the only Irish pub in Bangkok that’s Irish owned. And it’s not on the tourist trail, so the fact that it’s packed every night is testament to its quality. Those are locals propping up the bar, chatting up the waitresses, leaning over the pool tables - and it’s locals that give a pub its soul.
It helps, too, that here you can eat the best pub grub, probably in the world.
The Dubliner’s excellence was confirmed early, when Bangkok ’s premier English language magazine, Metro, awarded it Best Bangkok Pub 2000 after just one year in business. And 12 months later, the feat was repeated with Best Bangkok Pub 2001. Add to that 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.
It’s been this way since The Dubliner opened and ex-world snooker champion Dennis Taylor came over to drink with the locals, to hand out a few pool lessons, and to indulge in some cultural integration with a former Miss Thailand, who was joint guest of honour.
The pub’s set on three storeys. The icons of Ireland are all here - the road sign to Biorra, the Irish Times and GB Shaw, the map of the rugged Irish coastline, the mirrors advertising Bushmill’s.But they don’t look like they were carefully hung by an interior designer from Hong Kong, rather by a family of publicans from Limerick - Dad’s favourite ’Caffrey’s 2D Ale’, Mum’s ’Ross’s Royal Aerated Table Waters’.
Upstairs there’s a pool table, and a large big screen TV showing all sports and wonderful, broad high tables and tall stools for those who miss leaning at the bar. The walls have been painted a sensible nicotine colour as if stained by endless pouches of Old Holborn.
On the mezzanine you have an eye level view of the big screen sport, superb weathered and waxed floorboards, shelves of books and magazines, a low ceiling and a mix of hard backed and quilted leather chairs and sofas. It’s almost clubby - warm and intimate - the ideal atmosphere for a whiskey chaser to dream up another chapter of Myles na Gopaleen. Yet you still get all the noise of a busy pub, of family and friends getting gently bleary. And the staff are fantastic - smiley and attentive.
Sit downstairs by the window for a taste of Bangkok streetlife, the foodstalls steaming with the exotic fragrance of lemongrass and green curry, the tuk tuks and backslapping motorcycle taxi boys waiting for custom, the punters ambling towards the massage parlours of Washington Square. It’s a loud crowd on Friday nights with high energy music from Collide. Local girls link arms for the Thairish jig and, often, one or two Irish girls who can do it right - even drunk (especially drunk).
There’s joy in the air. People dance and then they hug, laughing to the driving rhythms of this Duo Collide. The wooden floors are ideal for stomping out the rhythms, which climb the stairs as if the whole building is having a party. It’s monumentally right to drink to this music. This is the best night out in Bangkok . |
