Morten Andersen rates a bar that commits to a look, and Luna commits to 1962. It hides beneath Super Miss Sue on Drury Street, runs a Campari bar and a list of cosmopolitan cocktails, and dresses its staff in plum tuxedos as though the decade never ended.
The room sits at 2-3 Drury Street, semi-subterranean below its sister restaurant, with low ceilings, low lighting and dark booths. The Irish Times described it as a return to early 1960s Italian-American restaurants, a Campari bar at its centre and waiters gliding in plum-coloured Louis Copeland tuxedos (The Irish Times). It reopened in 2021 after two years dark.
The Campari bar is the reason it earns a place here rather than only on a dinner list. The drinks lean classic and cosmopolitan, the Negroni territory the room is built for, and a seat at the bar is a genuine option rather than a waiting area for a table (Tripadvisor).
Three things to order. Take a Negroni or an Americano at the Campari bar, since the room is built around exactly that bitter Italian register. Follow with a Martini if you want to test the bar team properly. If you are staying for the kitchen, the charcoal grill and the fresh hand-made pasta are the dishes the place is known for.
The styling does real work. The decor runs to sleek 1950s steakhouse with subtle Venetian touches, dark booths and old-school elegance, the kind of room that flatters a date and a good suit (Yelp). It is theatre done with restraint rather than gimmick.
Head chef Hugh Higgins runs the kitchen on seasonal produce, so anyone settling in for dinner gets a menu that changes through the year. For a bar visit, that matters less than the Campari list, but it means a drink can roll into a full evening without leaving the booth.
The room has a second life worth knowing about. Luna closed abruptly in 2019 and stayed dark for two years before reopening in 2021, a gap that turned its return into one of the more watched openings of that year in Dublin. The revival kept the original conceit intact, the plum tuxedos, the Campari bar, the semi-subterranean hush, rather than chasing a new trend. That continuity is the point. Few Dublin rooms commit so fully to a single era, and fewer still pull it off without tipping into pastiche. The bar carries the look with enough restraint that it reads as a real Italian-American room rather than a costume, which is the hardest thing for a themed bar to manage.
Who it is for is the cocktail drinker who wants a room with a point of view, a couple after a date-night setting, and anyone who orders Negronis by default. It is wrong for a casual pint or a large loud group. For more in this register, our guide to the best cocktail bars in Dublin sets out the city's other contenders.
Best time to go is early in the evening from Tuesday to Thursday, when a stool at the Campari bar is realistic and the room is at its calmest. Luna opens from 17:00 and closes Sunday and Monday, so it suits a planned drink rather than a spontaneous one. Weekends book out for dinner.
Treat Luna as the dressed-up stop on a Drury Street evening. For the wider plan, start with our Dublin bar guide, and for a contrasting basement with a different mood try The Vintage Cocktail Club in Temple Bar.
Sources: The Irish Times; Tripadvisor; Yelp.
