O’Reilly’s of Temple Bar

There was no Guinness. Food was mediocre at best. Service was nonexistent. How do you not carry Guinness when you have the memorabilia around your restaurant?

While the food was standard (I had the fish pie, my friend had the pork belly), we were very disappointed by the false advertising for the 18.95 € menu. On a chalkboard outside, a menu was advertised for this price, which included a main course and a glass of wine. We chose this restaurant from the many options on the street because of this deal. When we sat inside, we asked to see the special menu and were informed by a waiter that this was the «early bird» menu which ended at 7 pm. Assuming that we had simply not read the menu in full and telling the waiter that he should take down this special menu after 7 pm so others won’t get confused, we stayed and ordered off of the regular menu.
When we left the restaurant, we saw that the 18.95 € menu was still up and there was absolutely no mention of the menu ending at 7 pm. This false advertising is misleading and reason enough for me to suggest that others skip this restaurant and head somewhere more honest!

This was the attempt we made for an authentic Irish dinner experience in Temple Bar, while the festivities of St. Patrick’s carried on outside (and inside, as several of the other patrons got a bit rowdy and were quite appropriately asked to leave). O’Reilly’s is right on the river, but accessible through Temple Bar, which makes for an interesting experience when it’s a bit crazy out there. Nonetheless, friends and I were able to get seated easily and enjoyed a nice enough meal, though certainly not as authentic as we might have hoped from a place called O’Reilly’s (it just seems like it should be bleeding green, with a name like that, you know?
One of my friends and I both had salads, which were quite good and generous portions. My other friends had Italian. It was all good, but it was pretty standard fare. The servers were helpful and friendly (a nice standard we found in Dublin) and we enjoyed a nice meal with little disturbance from the outside chaos (though a whole group of American university students came in and made things interesting, though that’s hardly something avoidable around the St. Patrick’s holiday.
Overall, our meal was nice. We enjoyed a bottle of wine and some piece and quiet over a good meal. There are lots of restaurants in the Temple Bar area that can offer the same, but O’Reilly’s is as good a choice as any.

We were hopeful going into O’Reily’s but that faded fast. It took 2 staff to find us a table and get us seated. The waiter who first sat us came back with menus but never returned. We had to ask another wait staff for water and to place an order.
Things continued in this way and eventually we determined we were the forgotten table as we saw half a dozen different wait staff including the owner at one point. We were twice told that the reason for slow service was that a cook had gone home early. A likely reason yet the desserts we ordered before the couple next to us had their entrees showed up after the same couple had dessert and was gone.
Overall the food that came was tasty, we just wish it would have came out a bit quicker so our 3 course dinner wasn’t 3 hours long.

I visited O’Reilly’s of Temple Bar during a recent trip to Dublin. This is just a very short and convenient walk over the River Liffey foot bridge from the Morrison Hotel where I had been staying. O’Reilly’s is a traditional Irish Restaurant in the busy Temple Bar district — although I found this to be an area which seemingly had many more tourists than local Dubliners.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my Fish and Chips, and would recommend it highly. The portion size was quite large, and it was well prepared and tasty. Also, the service was quite attentive even though I visited at a busy time, and was dining alone. Nonetheless, the waitresses attended to my needs just as effectively as to the tables around me which had multiple persons.
(Please note that the name of the restaurant is currently misspelled on the Unilocal Website, also it is an Irish Pub and Restaurant and is not Middle Eastern also as noted on the Unilocal Website.)