Dick Mack's

Green Street, Dingle, County Kerry

The Atmosphere

“A former cobbler's shop with a whiskey cabinet where the leather used to be.”

Dick Mack's was a cobbler and a bar at the same time for most of the twentieth century, which was normal in west Kerry and is charming now. The shoe lasts and the leather drawers are still there; the whiskey has taken the shelves. The Dingle Distillery is a few minutes away and its bottlings are poured here properly, alongside a long Irish list. There is a brewery in the yard behind. It is the best drinking room on the peninsula and it is thirty seconds from the harbour front.

The long version

A cobbler's shop turned bar on Green Street, where the shoe lasts are still on the shelves and the whiskey has taken over the leather drawers.

The shopfront gives it away before you are inside: Dick Mack's still looks, from the street, like the boot-maker's it once was, hand-painted lettering and a window that has not been redesigned to look like a bar. Step in and the old trade is still visible everywhere, the wooden shoe lasts kept on shelves, the drawers that used to hold leather now given over to bottles.

It is thirty seconds from Dingle's harbour front, and on any given evening the room holds a mix of fishermen, farmers off the peninsula and visitors who found their way here on a recommendation. The bar itself does not distinguish between them.

Green Street sits right off Dingle's Main Street, a short stretch of town that manages to hold most of the peninsula's best pubs within a few minutes' walk of one another, and Dick Mack's is the anchor most locals name first when a visitor asks where to start an evening.

“The shoe lasts are still on the shelves. The whiskey has simply taken the leather's old place.”

The room

Dick Mack's spent most of the twentieth century as a cobbler and a bar simultaneously, an arrangement that was simply normal in west Kerry and reads now as something closer to theatre, except none of it was staged. The lasts and the leather drawers are original, not props.

There is a small brewery in the yard behind, and the yard itself is quieter than the front bar, worth knowing if the main room is loud.

Look for the brass studs set into the pavement outside, added over the years to mark celebrities and notable visitors who have stopped in, a small and slightly odd tradition that fits the pub's general refusal to take itself too seriously.

What to drink here

The Dingle Distillery is a few minutes up the road, and its bottlings are poured here with real care, alongside a long list of Irish whiskey more broadly. Drink the Dingle single malt here rather than carrying a bottle home untasted.

It is a serious whiskey bar wearing a very unserious former life as a shoe shop, and the two things sit together without contradiction.

The staff pour with the same unhurried confidence found in the best Dublin pubs, and a request for a recommendation among the whiskey list is answered with genuine knowledge rather than a shrug toward the most expensive bottle.

Who it suits

Anyone spending an evening in Dingle town. It is, by most accounts, the best drinking room on the peninsula, and its location on Green Street puts it within a two-minute walk of most of the town's other pubs.

It suits a slow evening of moving between bars more than a single long sit, since Dingle rewards exactly that kind of wandering.

What we would not pretend

It is well known enough now that summer evenings bring a real crowd, and the front bar can get tight. The yard out back is the better bet if you want to actually hear each other.

How we would use it

An evening in Dingle after Slea Head, dinner in town, then here for a Dingle single malt before the two-door walk to Foxy John's to finish the night.

Rooms Worth Requesting

What it actually feels like.

Drink the Dingle single malt here rather than carrying a bottle home untasted. The yard out the back is quieter than the front bar.

Why we recommend it

A space that justifies the journey.

A working cobbler's fittings, a serious whiskey list and Dingle's own distillery down the road. Nowhere else combines those three.