McGowans of Phibsboro

Do you notice most good reviews are from women. Thats because if your a man and not garda you won’t be able to get in.

Either a great night with a decent crowd or crickets and tumbleweed.
As mentioned by others the bouncers are quite hit and miss too and on weekend nights there is a cover charge of like € 7 (paying into a pub in a suburb, really?)
I personally prefer the Back page across the road; more chilled, board games and better food.
If your looking for a bit of a dance but don’t want to venture to town then McGowans is grand I suppose.

Great choice for a night out! It gets very crowded… but it just adds to the whole experience. If you’re looking for a place to dance and have some drinks that’s the place.
Single people will definitely have a good time here.

A poor man’s ‘Coppers’ on a good night, tumbleweed quiet on a bad evening, McGowans is just one of those places everybody ends up, wishing they’d gone somewhere quieter.
Staff are cool out, and it’s not ludicrously ‘town’ expensive — but it’s a bit too manic for the likes of me. I prefer to be able to hear people when their speaking and enjoy sitting more than shimmying– but, hey, for peeps looking for a ‘ware’ & to get black out drunk look no further!

Was lucky enough to meet a couple of locals in Smithfield who took my sister and I here when we were on vacation. It was a nice place to go to after all of the bars closed. Sure as hell beat going into Temple Bar every night with our thumbs up our asses which we probably would have had to do if we didn’t know about this place. I like the décor, the American plates all over the walls was pretty damn cool. Loved the old Irish phone booth too. Overal I really enjoyed my time here, and after reading some of the other non-​local reviews I hope they let us back in when we go to Dublin again this year!

Great place for drinks and dancing! Good deals on drinks during the week for student nights. However it can be a difficult pub to get into on weekend nights. Bouncers can be ruthless, not let you in and have no reasons. But the crowd is normally good and never much trouble.. . Normally crowd around 25 upwards.
Good spot for a late night out with friends

Your absolutely right I live in Glasnevin and get told that aswel, and I said to the gentleman that how am I meant to be a regular if you won’t let me in to become on?
They need to respect people who try to get in that don’t cause trouble and that have money to spend…
Very discouraging

Went here a few times and have had great nights the times I was there not that I remember much of them!
We stoped going here for a few months and then me and my boyfriend tried here last Halloween and we where told not tonight regulars only so we thought ok it’s Halloween I’m sure most places are the same. We tried then again another night after that and where told the same thing so we won’t be going back I think it’s a disgrace.

I would have always been a fan of McGowans. Working in Croke Park when i was in college meant we had many many nights in here after match days.
Last night after a family event my uncle, my cousin, his girlfriend & i tried to get in together & we were pulled to the said for a talking to. We were refused for having had «too much to drink» and being an «unfamiliar face». I can tell you now with certainty i was sober, as was my cousin’s girlf. The boys had had a few drinks but were by no means drunk.
Funnily enough 2 different groups of taxis pulled up almost immediately after us. One full of boys who were also pulled to the side to be spoken to. & one full of girls who were waved on without so much as a second glance from the bouncers. Disgraceful stuff. I wont be going back!

So my first night out away from the city centre was extremely eventful and pleasantly surprising.
At our arrival we were all given a coupon for a free shot before midnight, which just made the night that all that much better. The dance floor got crowed fairly quickly as the DJ played some classic rock tunes and everyone was busy drinking and mingling as opposed to other places where people don’t really socialize outside their circle of friends. Around 2 am my credit card was stolen so I went out front to call the bank to cancel it and mentioned it to the bouncer on the way. He was particularly helpful, wrote down my info and promised to give me a call once he checked the security footage, which he later did.
All in all, apart from the minor credit card incident the night was a huge success and I’ll definitely be going back there again.

One of the beet nights out you can have is here. Groups of 2 plus. Always great banter from a great crowd. Always busy and the your never waiting to long at the bar for a pint or shot

The 4 stars are for the food. In particular the burgers! OM NOM nom…
This place is a meat market with all sorts of unsavoury horny nurses and Gardaí etc. knocking about the place on a Friday and Saturday night.
The Coppers of the Northside.
If you are straight and want to score someone easy? Then do come here at night.
If you want great pub grub and hot waiters to serve you when you are hungover on a Saturday afternoon? Then come here before it gets dark!
Ironic how this «meat market» actually serves great meat on a bun with fries!

Preis-​Leistungsverhältnis ist hier gut. Bedienung ist freundlich. Ambiente gemütlich.

I visited McGowans for only the second time this decade, on New Year’s Eve just gone
And it’s a safe bet that I won’t be revisiting it’s shores anytime soon
In fairness though, it does cater for a specific type of punter, many unfeasibly tall women (I’m almost 6 feet tall but there were many women my height and bigger!) all wearing identikit dresses in various shades of red, purple and blue
The fellas too employed a similar ‘blend in’ strategy, with many a checked shirt to be seen
The last time I was here, it was full of culchies, but this time round it was Dubs as far as the eye could see (the back bar)
And I can’t fault the music, instead of boring us with the usual Kings of Leon and Grease Lightning drivel, the DJ surprised me with plenty of decent pop choons
Maybe I’m weird but the only women who interested me out of about two hundred were two women inexplicably less than 5’11 in height… one wearing an odd but eyecatching black shawl with white polka dots and a youngstrel who could’ve been Jenny Lewis’s doppelgänger, but both were quickly consumed by the thirsty male hordes… Foiled again!

I stop in here almost weekly for a meal after work. Every thing I have had to eat here has always been solid and never disappointed. The burgers are good as are the chips. I sometimes have a quiet drink or two with my meal. Now, I know nothing about the later evening going-​ons here so can only vouch for the food. If you want a filling meal after a long day at work, this is a good place to go for it!
It is one of those places filled with televisions, which are always tuned into whichever sport event is the most popular at the moment.

McGowans is a summer floor-​filler of a pub. It’s a place for hard-​drinking, not quiet pints and chit-​chat. So with that in mind, I quite like it…
It has pretty much everything you’d need for a night of questionable choices: well-​stocked bar, big smoking area, plenty of dancefloor. If your expectations are low, and your tolerance for booze is high, you’ll find a lot to like in McGowans.

Sampled McGowans the other night with friends who had been there before. Safe to say they weren’t wrong when they said the food was good. The staff were friendly and the music was generally quite while we were eating. Plenty of TV’s to watch the sports.
I was surprised it was quite on a Saturday evening when we got in at 7pm and was still not moving by 10 when we left. We weren’t planning on going to the nightclub so we were not swayed by the lack of people.
If you want good food and great staff & banter then give this place a try!

McGowans is your standard-​super-​pub in the middle of Phibsboro. A quiet local with average grub over days, but come Thursday and the weekend, things are heating up a lot. Taking advantage of it’s late license, McGowans offers the pint for 3,50 € on Thursdays (with a 5 € cover charge) and stays open until 3, and on the weekends there’s a mixed programme with bands and DJ’s. It gets crowded and hot, and many young inebriated Irish ladies have tried their pole-​dancing skills on the poles available for everyone in the upstairs area (and to my utter shame many a young inebriated Irishman too). The only place in Phibsboro that has 20 taxis on standby in the early hours of Sunday.

You wouldn’t be going to McGowans on a quiet night out! It’s one of those places that comes alive at all hours of the night/​early morning and if you’re single and looking you’ll probably score there — or there’s something wrong with you! I went there one time on a Friday night at about 9pm and it was lovely and chilled — hardly a sinner in the bar. Then I went there another time on the Saturday night before the All Ireland football final and it was akin to a meat market! It took us ages to get in the door and when we did the place was rocking with guys and girls in their relevant county jerseys! There was barely room to breathe. It was a bit scary in my eyes, but if that’s the type of night out you’re looking for, off you go to McGowans. With three dance floors and a late night licence seven nights a week, you won’t be disappointed!

I encountered McGowans at a time when I was beginning to lose all faith in the pubs of the Glasnevin/​Phibsboro area, so I was a bit dubious about the place at first.
My suspicions turned out to be completely unfounded, however, as McGowans is great place to spend a night.
McGowans could be described as a superpub, as it is really big, but it doesn’t have the horrid modern décor that seems to be the standard of superpubs. It has plenty of seating and a dancefloor, and there is a real nice mix in the crowd: ages range from the late teens through to people in their forties and fifties, with students from down the country and locals all chatting and having a bit of banter.
It’s free in before 11 (or 12: can’t remember which), and the drinks are pub prices rather than nightclub prices. Great for a night out or just a few quiet ones of an evening.
So if you want a good night out and don’t fancy heading into town, you could do much worse than going to McGowans, an all-​round really good spot.

I went here for the first time last week with a girlfriend of mine on a Saturday night. We arrived about midnight and had to pay € 7, not sure if this changes with the time you arrive or day etc. The place was full of people, the dance floor was starting to fill up and everybody was on their merry way by this time.
This place is big, with a big bar and good sized outdoor smoking area. I didn’t have to wait long to get served at the bar and the staff were quite friendly. I can’t remember how much the drinks cost but I don’t remember being shocked at the prices so they must be pretty standard!
The music was great handbag music that got the girls on the dance floor which made the guys follow. This place is full of men! It is great! Most of the men are from the country too, which means it is really easy to pull, so girls make sure you pack your toothbrush in your handbag because you won’t be going home alone tonight!