Riverview Bar

Took an hour to get our food. Service was unfriendly and slow. Food is overpriced and sub par, at best. Tomato Basil Soup was worse than American Campbell’s out of the can. Seafood chowder and the view are the only things «good» about this place. Gross.

Absolutely beautiful bar inside, and if you sit outside, you can sit next to the running river with Kilkenny Castle in the background.
The service was fast and very friendly. Really enjoyed this place.

The location of the Riverview Bar could not be better. Set in the most picturesque location of the already very picturesque Kilkenny City, the Riverview bar has a lovely terrace with beautiful views of the castle just across the River Nore. Set amongst the arches of The Bridge (apparently the only one in Kilkenny, or else they’d have given it a name), the Riverview Bar should be the perfect location for summer afternoon drinks. Close your eyes, and you could almost be in a wet and blustery version of Paris.
And I say «should be» rather than «is» very advisedly, as the Riverview Bar has one monumental drawback. And although I’m going to capitalise the first letter of every word of the next sentence, I don’t want you think that I’m exaggerating or reverting to hyperbole, because I really mean what I’m about to say. The Riverview Bar Served Me the Worst Pint of Guinness That I Have Drank in Four or Five Years.*
I mean it. It was really terrible. It failed every one of the patented Cathal C.‘s Good Stout Tests, which I shall relate to you below:
1. There should be no air-​bubbles in the head.
Riverview Bar: A number of air-​bubbles, but nothing catastrophic.
2. After the pint has settled, flick the glass with your forefinger. The glass should give a nice glassy «Ping» sound.
Riverview Bar: the settled pint gave a dull, plastic-​sounding «thuck» — gas trapped inside the glass. Instant fail. In fact, the Riverview Bar’s pint had a clearly visible sheen of little bubbles coating the inside of the glass.
3. The head should leave a coating all the way along the inside of the glass as you drink the pint.
Riverview Bar: no coating; in fact, by about a third of the way down, the head had disintegrated into a thin scum floating on the black liquid below. Ugh.
4. The stout should retain a cloudy opacity the for the entirety of the pint.
Riverview Bar: by the second half of the pint, the black body of the pint was thin and watery, and was quite translucent towards the sides of the glass. Horrible.
Still, beautiful location and quite cheap drinks (certainly when compared to Dublin prices, at any rate). Just don’t come within a million miles of the stout, and you should be fine.
*This may not necessarily include pints of Guinness served at concerts, raves or in other plastic glasses instances.