Photograph: Jean Housen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Editorial Review
The Palace Bar
The Atmosphere
“A Victorian bar off Westmoreland Street that bottles its own whiskey casks.”
The Palace has stood on Fleet Street since 1823, and its back room, all mirrors, skylight and worn wood, was the unofficial newsroom of Irish journalism for most of the twentieth century. Flann O'Brien and Patrick Kavanagh drank here. What makes it essential now is the whiskey: the Palace bottles its own single casks, so there are pours on that back shelf you cannot buy anywhere else on earth. Ask what cask is open. The staff know exactly what they are pouring.
The long version
Off Fleet Street, under a skylight that has watched over a century of Irish journalism, the Palace bottles whiskey you cannot buy anywhere else.
The front bar on Fleet Street is handsome enough on its own, all dark wood and Victorian glass, but the room that matters is through the back, where a skylight drops daylight onto mirrors and a floor that has taken a hundred years of newspapermen's boots. Flann O'Brien drank here. Patrick Kavanagh drank here. The room does not advertise this so much as simply carry on being the kind of place where it happened.
Behind the bar a shelf holds bottles you will not find in any shop: single casks the pub bottles itself, aged and finished on site, poured out by staff who can tell you exactly what is in the glass and why it tastes the way it does.
“There are pours on that back shelf you cannot buy anywhere else on earth.”
The room
The Palace has stood on Fleet Street since 1823, and its layout still separates two moods: the front bar, brighter and more passing-trade, and the back room under the skylight, which was effectively the unofficial newsroom of Irish journalism for most of the twentieth century.
Sit in the back if you can. The light through the skylight changes the room across an evening in a way no other Dublin pub quite manages, and the worn wood underfoot feels earned rather than distressed for effect.
What to drink here
Ask what Palace cask is currently open. The pub bottles its own single casks, which means there are pours on that back shelf that exist nowhere else on earth, not in a shop, not in another bar. The staff know the details of each one and will talk you through it without a hard sell.
Drink it neat with water on the side, the way it is meant to be tasted rather than diluted by ice.
Who it suits
Whiskey drinkers who want something beyond a bottle they can buy at the airport, and anyone with an interest in the literary and journalistic history of Dublin, since the pub was genuinely part of that story rather than claiming it after the fact.
It is central enough to fold into a Temple Bar evening but sits just far enough from it in temperament, a calmer room a few steps off the main strip.
What we would not pretend
The exclusive cask bottlings rotate and are not always available, so do not build an evening entirely around a specific one. Ask first.
How we would use it
An evening that starts in Temple Bar and moves here for the second or third stop, into the back room under the skylight, one glass of whatever cask is open, taken slowly.
Rooms Worth Requesting
What it actually feels like.
Sit in the back room under the skylight, not at the front bar. Ask for the current Palace cask bottling and drink it neat with water on the side.
Why we recommend it
A space that justifies the journey.
The single best whiskey list in Dublin sits in a room that has not been redecorated for effect. Their own cask bottlings make it the one whiskey stop we would not swap.