Editorial
Dublin's bar scene deserves far more credit than it typically receives. The city has spent the last decade quietly building one of Europe's strongest combinations of traditional pub culture and serious contemporary cocktail bars. While the tourist infrastructure around Temple Bar remains predictable, the real drinking in Dublin happens in neighbourhood pubs and dedicated craft spaces that have earned their reputations through consistency rather than Instagram presence. These are the best bars in Dublin we actually recommend.
Dublin's oldest bars are among its best. The Long Hall, Mulligan's, and Kehoe's represent centuries of accumulated knowledge about how to run a pub properly. These aren't heritage attractions — they're working neighbourhood institutions that happen to have history.
Dublin has quietly developed a serious cocktail scene centred around Temple Bar and Wexford Street. The quality is genuinely high, the bartenders trained properly, and the prices remain considerably lower than London for equivalent execution. Craft beer has also found its home in dedicated neighbourhood bars across the city.
Some of Dublin's best bars are the ones that serve their neighbourhoods quietly without needing to announce themselves. Portobello, Smithfield, and Stoneybatter hold bars that are genuinely worth the trip.
Dublin rewards visitors who look beyond the Temple Bar infrastructure. The city's best bars exist in neighbourhoods like Portobello, South Great George's Street, and Smithfield — places where the bars exist for locals first and visitors second. We'd start with Mulligan's for the Guinness experience, then move to 37 Dawson Street for cocktails, and finish at The Cobblestone for the music. To explore multiple neighbourhoods in a single evening, follow our Dublin bar crawl guide.
The combination of world-class traditional pub culture and serious contemporary bartending is genuinely difficult to find outside Dublin. The city has earned its reputation quietly, which says everything about the quality of the operation.
Sofia covers European bar scenes for barsforKings. She has been visiting Dublin regularly since 2015 and argues that the city's craft beer and traditional pub culture is one of the strongest combinations in Europe.
Five editor-curated guides, each ten bars, each tuned to a specific moment. The Dublin bars our editors send first dates to, and the ones we send proposals to, and everything between.
Last reviewed April 30, 2026 by the barsforKings editorial team