Hitting the straps of our second week on the hunt for Dublin’s Best Smithwick’s Experience, we visit the miniscule but ever popular McDaid’s on Harry Street. Like nearby Neary’s, the Duke or the Bailey, McDaid’s is an off-Grafton Street favourite for a wide cross-section of Dubliners.
“Which one of you is having the Smithwick’s Pale Ale?” our barman asks as he leans in conspiratorially towards us and questions of my accomplice who’s taking the Smithwick’s Pale Ale while I stick with a pint of the regular ruby stuff. He continues, “What you make of it? I drink Smithwick’s myself, you see and the Pale Ale’s getting a lot of interest.” My accomplice holds his pint up to the dim evening light in the bar and nods eagerly in agreement, despite the lack of reference point. “Well I’ve not had it before and I think it’s delicious!” he says of his first pint of Smithwick’s Pale Ale.
McDaid’s is, as the saying goes, small but perfectly formed. It feels like it may not have been updated much in the decades it has sat on Harry Street, but then again we notice an array of whiskeys new and old behind the bar and a fridge full of variety of Irish craft brews. Our barman however, his true colours as a Smithwick’s drinker already revealed, has no time for the fancy stuff, and concentrates on expertly pouring one of each shade of crisp ale for us. The atmosphere is plain-spoken too. There’s a TV perched over the doorframe but it’s predominantly an irrelevance, as when you look out that way your eye is naturally drawn to the details of stained glass that stretch over the door and window frames. This is a delightful place for conversation and simple pints. The rooms is so small that from our barside perch we can check on what pretty much everyone is drinking: there’s one lager, one G&T, the rest is Smithwick’s and stout. We suggest a food menu, and our barman smiles and shows us the crisps on offer.
As we discuss matters trivial and not so at the bar, a humungous hand reaches between us and seems to grasp two pints in one hand. We turn around at look aghast at the giants of rugby past who have set up shop behind us. “It’s him off the telly! From A Question of Sport!” Indeed it is Bill Beaumont, presumably clocking off from the IRB Building on St. Stephen’s Green. Even though the retired lock forward retains truly massive proportions, I turn to my accomplice unimpressed: “I was always more of a Beefy fan.”
McDaid’s
3 Harry Street, Dublin 2
t: 01-6794359
