The Sidecar

A Hotel Bar That Earns Its Own Billing

Hotel bars in Dublin exist on a spectrum. At one end sit the transactional lobbies serving pints to guests between check-in and dinner. At the other, a smaller number of addresses have built reputations that draw people who aren't staying upstairs. The Sidecar is a Modern Irish Gastropub at The Westbury on Balfe St in Dublin, with a typical price of about $25 per person. The Sidecar, located within The Westbury on Balfe Street in the heart of the city's Grafton Quarter, belongs to that second category. The address alone signals something: The Westbury has long served as a reference point for the kind of Dublin that treats hospitality as a considered practice rather than a throughput exercise.

Balfe Street sits just off Grafton Street, which means the surrounding block is dense with eating and drinking options across every price tier. That context matters. For a hotel bar to hold its own here, it needs a reason for people to walk past a dozen alternatives and come inside. The Sidecar's answer to that challenge is in how it structures its offer, which rewards a closer look than the surroundings might initially suggest.

How the Menu is Built, and What That Tells You

The Sidecar's menu architecture reveals its intentions. The city's cocktail culture has matured considerably over the past decade. Dublin now has bars that approach drinks with the same systematic rigour applied to tasting menus at addresses like Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen or Glovers Alley.

A bar that knows what it is tends to show that in how its menu is sectioned. Classic formats, seasonal additions, and signature builds each tell you something different about a programme's confidence. A menu heavy on classics signals reverence for technique and repeatability. A menu weighted toward originals signals ambition and seasonal responsiveness. The balance between the two is where you read a bar's character. Within the hotel bar format specifically, menus that lean on this architecture tend to outperform those that default to a generic spirits list, because they give the guest a reason to be guided rather than simply served.

That dynamic plays out clearly in Dublin's hotel bar tier. The city's leading dining rooms, from Patrick Guilbaud to Bastible, have raised the floor for what accompaniment looks like at a serious meal. A hotel bar attached to a property with genuine hospitality credentials can inherit some of that expectation. The Sidecar sits in that position.

Dublin's Grafton Quarter as Competitive Context

Understanding where The Sidecar fits requires mapping the immediate neighbourhood. The Grafton Quarter is one of Dublin's most concentrated hospitality zones. It draws a mix of hotel guests, theatre-goers, after-work professionals, and visitors who have already done the rounds at well-documented addresses. For any bar in this zone, the guest walking through the door has almost certainly had a drink somewhere else in the city before. That means the room needs to hold its own on a second or third stop, not just a first impression.

The Westbury's position on Balfe Street gives The Sidecar a slightly sheltered microclimate compared to the louder venues on the main Grafton strip. Hotel bars in this configuration, insulated from the street's foot traffic but accessible to anyone who chooses them deliberately, tend to attract a different rhythm of drinking. Slower. More conversational. Less defined by rounds and more by the occasion. That is not a function of the bar's quality so much as the physics of the location, but a bar that programmes itself well can lean into that rhythm productively.

For comparison, Dublin's other serious cocktail addresses tend to cluster in different parts of the city. The scene that has developed around D'Olier Street reflects a more counter-cultural approach to drinks programming. The Grafton Quarter version is smoother in register, suited to guests who want considered drinks without having to cross a threshold into something more abrasive. Neither is better as a category; they serve different occasions.

Ireland's Wider Drinks and Dining Context

Dublin's bar scene does not exist in isolation from what is happening in Irish hospitality more broadly. The past several years have seen a significant shift in how Irish venues at every tier think about their drinks offer. Places like Aniar in Galway and Liath in Blackrock have pushed the conversation around Irish ingredients and technique in food. That same conversation is now running through drinks, with bars increasingly looking to Irish spirits, foraged ingredients, and locally sourced produce to define their seasonal rotations.

Hotel bars that engage with this shift, even partially, tend to earn more sustained interest than those that simply maintain a competent international spirits list. The alignment between a property's food offer and its drinks programme has become a marker of seriousness in Irish hospitality. Venues further afield, from Bastion in Kinsale to Campagne in Kilkenny, have demonstrated how coherent programming across both disciplines reinforces a venue's identity. The same logic applies in the capital.

Planning Your Visit

The Sidecar is located at The Westbury, Balfe Street, Dublin. For those building a wider Irish trip, the venue sits in a city that serves as a logical hub before heading to addresses like Terre in Castlemartyr, Chestnut in Ballydehob, Homestead Cottage in Doolin, House in Ardmore, or Lady Helen in Thomastown.

For reference points beyond Ireland, the hotel bar format at its most refined can be assessed against Le Bernardin in New York City and the drinks programmes adjacent to tasting-menu restaurants like Atomix. And if Baltimore's dede demonstrates anything, it is that serious hospitality in a mid-sized city requires the same level of programming discipline as the major markets.