The Dubliner Magazine

Besting Ourselves!

Welcome to our first ever Best of Dublin summer annual. We’ve busted a gut over the past few months coming up with a guide that Dubliners – those here for a week and those here for a lifetime – can use to make life in our lovely city easier, and a bit more fun. You already know all the obvious sights and sounds around, so we’re not going to bother with them. Instead, we’re giving you the insider’s guide. This means that it will, at times, get a little quirky.

But there must be someone out there who wants to find out where you can drink a cocktail served in a potty. And surely others are dying to know where you can have a bracing sea swim followed by a pee at Dublin’s best urinal. And who doesn’t need help finding hidden pockets of tranquility within the madness of summer in the city?

And then there’s the food. We’ve picked out the 40 best things to eat in Dublin, and let me tell you, you won’t go wrong with these dishes. From Taco Taco’s chicken burritos and gingerbread men from the Bretzel Bakery, all the way up to Chapter One’s lamb plate and Kevin’s pig head, we have something for every pocket, and every craving. We’ve even solved the eternal question of Beshoffs v Burdock’s. But be warned: if you’re not hungry at the start of this feature, you will be by the end. *Hic*

Thanks as always to the team in here, Fiachra & Neil, Paul, Paul & Terry, and to all our new friends at the VIP Magazine Group. And thanks to you, the reader, for your support and feedback throughout the year.

Have a great summer!

Nicola Reddy,
Editor

Win! Win! Win!

The Dubliner Best of Dublin Summer Annual is published 28th May

Second Helpings

Trevor White applies his seven-second theory of restaurant reviewing to the kitchens of Melbourne

I recently caused a minor kerfuffle in Melbourne, where a large daily newspaper published my seven-second guide to the city’s top restaurants. I was trying to prove that first impressions are hugely important when it comes to dining out. To be honest, the theory isn’t entirely foolproof.

Some of the places I raved about disappointed on a second visit, while others pulled their socks up. Surprising? Hardly. Once recognized, a food critic is either poisoned (rare, but not unknown) or treated like a rich old uncle on his deathbed. Hence minor miseries suddenly become small joys. To be fair, there have been plenty of those: Melbourne is full of good restaurants.

If you have the good fortune to visit the city at any point soon – seems like half the country is going in search of work – here are the restaurants that reward repeated inspection:

On Your Bike!

Cian Hallinan puts two and two wheels together

So the long-anticipated bicycle scheme has finally kicked in around the city centre with JC Decaux throwing us some wheels as recompense for sprawling their commercial messages across every conceivable urban surface.

450 rothars at 40 different locations will be provided by the advertising giants in exchange for 15 years of permission to stick great big hoardings shilling rubbish willy-nilly about the city.

The outdoor space is thought to be worth about a million blips annually, so with the boys at JC gaining over €33,000 of prime marketing real estate per clunky push-bike, it's pretty sound business indeed.

So prepare yourself for legions of inexperienced helmetless drunks and tourists freewheeling through our cycle-lane-free city boulevards and wide piazzas.

The head trauma wards must be waiting with bated breath.

Say What You Want About Paul McAdam

... at least he made the happy hours run on time

The Hangman's Noose

Myles and myles of rope

There's a great one from the vaults at the Irish Times website today: Myles Na Gopaleen's slanted treatise on capital punishment from 22 May, 1959. Makes you proud to dwell in the Realm of Heremon.

It's a little reminiscent of the hangman's letter from the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses:

Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the above-mentioned painful case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of February 1900 and i hanged...

... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville prison and i was assistant when...

... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith...

i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir' my teas is five ginnese.

The Free Newspaper Wars

Paper tigers threaten us all

They're not just innocent skinny tabloids designed to give DART cleaners nightmares: The Metro and the Herald AM could cause an Irish media apocalypse...

... if we're anything like the Danes.

Eurovisual

Russians explode the interval show

Sinéad Mulvey and Black Daisy might have failed to fly the green, white and orange at the Eurovision but there were still plenty of us Irish folk watching the final last weekend.

And in amongst the usual musical messes and camp cumulus, there was one gem: the interval show. Oh sure, some of us still hold a candle for Riverdance and its orange-skinned frontman, but a dude running full pelt through a glass window on stage? Beats keeping your hands down by your side while you jig it up.

Did you miss me? Forgotten Classics, by Denis Hickie (music fan, rugby legend)

DAVID BYRNE
GROWN BACKWARDS

Following his recent virtuoso effort at the National Concert Hall, I felt compelled to root through my music collection and dig out Grown Backwards. Recorded in 2004 at various locations in the US and the UK on the pioneering Nonesuch label, this album epitomises what David Byrne has evolved into since his Talking Heads days. It mixes the quirky (almost definitely an insulting term to use about the music of a genius like Byrne) with the classical.

The arrangement of each song is impeccable; you get the feeling that he spends three times longer arranging a piece of music than most artists do. With so many unique songs on one record, it’s an album to listen to from start to finish. His re-working of music by Verdi and Bizet is both brilliant and brave. The latter’s ‘Pearl Fishers Duet,’ featuring Rufus Wainwright, is a fantastic modern interpretation of one of the most beautiful pieces of classical music ever written.

Still, for me the favourite is the opening track, ‘Glass, Concrete and Stone.’ Given that this is a man who is the musical icon of most architects, writing a song like that is a definite case of knowing your audience.