Dublin in the early 80's

Annasopra

Some evidence



https://comeheretome.com/2014/01/02/advertisements-from-the-1983-dublin-theatre-festival-guide/

https://comeheretome.com/2013/08/22/some-notes-on-the-history-of-lebanse-restaurants-in-dublin/

https://comeheretome.com/2013/05/16/some-notes-on-the-history-of-indian-restaurants-in-dublin/

https://comeheretome.com/2013/01/08/dublins-first-italian-restaurants/


https://comeheretome.com/2010/01/09/dublin-citys-oldest-restaurant/

https://comeheretome.com/2013/01/14/dublins-first-pizzerias/

Dubl07

Bambi wrote: »

Not really, proper restaurants were not on the agenda for most dubs in the 80s and there was not a whole lot of them around. We didn't have a culture of dining out like other european countries did.

It was very much an aspirational thing for people who saw themselves as being on the up.

OP was talking about her mother's graduation, not just a date night.

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Blakes?

Same premises. It started out as the Swiss Chalet in the 70s (part of a Canadian chain, I think?) then Blakes for ages, after that a variety of other short-lived enterprises which didn't all qualify as restaurants. Upstairs was the upmarket Shannon's which went bust pretty spectacularly, and then a smashing Chinese called Pings which was pricey enough but excellent. Access to the site has always been awkward though and the building appears to be dilapidated these days.

Steve

Nobody remembers Bewleys?

Failing that, and if you were loaded, Clereys?

silverharp

Bambi wrote: »

Not really, proper restaurants were not on the agenda for most dubs in the 80s and there was not a whole lot of them around. We didn't have a culture of dining out like other european countries did.

It was very much an aspirational thing for people who saw themselves as being on the up.

it wasnt a big thing for sure, as a kid chances are I was mostly going to restaurants when american relations came over and took us out , I do remember Captain Americas and Bad Ass Cafe for the odd birthday party

silverharp

Steve wrote: »

Nobody remembers Bewleys?

Failing that, and if you were loaded, Clereys?

there was some italian place that used to be open between leeson st and the burlington where you could get a nice meal at 3 or 4 in the morning...good times!

Steve

silverharp wrote: »

it wasnt a big thing for sure, as a kid chances are I was mostly going to restaurants when american relations came over and took us out , I do remember Captain Americas and Bad Ass Cafe for the odd birthday party

We were left in the car with a bottle of red lemonade and a packet or crisps between us..

Zaph

silverharp wrote: »

there was some italian place that used to be open between leeson st and the burlington where you could get a nice meal at 3 or 4 in the morning...good times!

Da Vincenzos? It was more or less opposite the Leeson Lounge.

riclad

People would mainly go to hotel restaurants in the 80s,
There was not the wide range of restaurants there is now .
there were places like the kylemore or arnotts restaurant.
there was hardly any places to get coffee apart from bewleys .
starbucks was not in ireland in the 80s.
OF course alot of pubs served dinners in the 80s

silverharp

Zaph wrote: »

Da Vincenzos? It was more or less opposite the Leeson Lounge.

memory is hazy after a bottle of lesson st port which was the closest thing to to russians getting alcohol out of boot polish :pac:

Harvey Normal

riclad wrote: »

People would mainly go to hotel restaurants in the 80s,
There was not the wide range of restaurants there is now .
there were places like the kylemore or arnotts restaurant.
there was hardly any places to get coffee apart from bewleys .
starbucks was not in ireland in the 80s.
OF course alot of pubs served dinners in the 80s

I can remember the late 80's and coffee was served in cafes. Mostly it was tea though.

Clearly there were restaurants- not as many as now is not the same as none. And a hotel restaurant or a pub restaurant or a fast food provider or a cafe all count anyway.

Gatling

vicwatson wrote: »

King burger in ilac centre and burgerland o'connell st (went on fire), ah when burgers were beef

Ahhhhhhhh the memories ,

Breakfast of champions too

Dubl07

Oh, and Dobbins, The Unicorn, Le Caprice and other Gentile family places.

At what stage did Fitzers develop a restaurant on every corner? Was it only in the 90s?

foggy_lad

Ded_Zebra wrote: »

My mother is for ever telling me that in Dublin in the 80's there was no such thing as a restaurant. Specifically we were talking about her graduation, she is saying that it was't major celebration back then to graduate. No one in her class made a big deal of it, apparently. I find this hard to believe. She attributes this in part to the fact that there was no such thing as a restaurant in Dublin at the time that you could have gone to with your family etc. and had a meal out and a couple of drinks.

This isn't the only time she has argued that there was nowhere to eat out in Ireland in the 80's. I really really find this very hard to believe. I think it is a case of she never ate out back then and therefore assumed that no one did. This was, in her mind, because there was nowhere to do it.

I also believe that graduating would have been a big deal for a lot of people, just as it is now, and they would have celebrated it. Even if they had to have a home cooked meal. This is an aside point however.

So AH, is there any knowledgeable people here old enough to remember the 80's to confirm this one way or the other?

Is this a school graduation we are discussing here? if so then most schools except the poshest only ever had a debs ball and the practice of going to more that one debs was extremely rare, then the American influenza arrived and we get graduations as well as debs and it is common as muck for lads and girls to go to several debs balls.

When I had my debs it was a big occasion but has been cheapened by the Americanisation of Irish society.

There were very few places where normal people could afford to eat out in more than a few times a year, restaurants were only for family occasions and anniversaries etc

Graduation(from School) was not a big deal as it did not exist for most schools.

Faith+1

Christ the 80's sound miserable.

foggy_lad

Faith+1 wrote: »

Christ the 80's sound miserable.

They were really miserable for many people as your mortgage could increase by several hundred pounds a month, at one stage interest rates were up over 18%, there was no USC but taxes were higher as were PRSI deductions, petrol was expensive as was insurance and car tax. There were few large cinemas outside of the cities and county towns and most were only 1 or maybe 2 screens.

Faith+1

foggy_lad wrote: »

They were really miserable for many people as your mortgage could increase by several hundred pounds a month, at one stage interest rates were up over 18%, there was no USC but taxes were higher as were PRSI deductions, petrol was expensive as was insurance and car tax. There were few large cinemas outside of the cities and county towns and most were only 1 or maybe 2 screens.

Fcuk. I was born in '85 so the 80's are a vague memory! lol

The_Valeyard

I remember when Captain America's was cool

And the Pizza Pie factory by Stephens Green.

VladamirP

Ded_Zebra wrote: »

She has said before that you could eat in Hotels alright... But nowhere that was just a restaurant.

I can't imagine that you wouldn't eat in a hotel though... (years of wisdom flow's here)...........You still would these days if they did good food.

JupiterKid

Yes of course there were restaurants in the early 80s. I was only a small child back then but Nicos on Dame St was going since the 1950s, quite a few French restaurants were in Dublin in the early 1960s and Guilbauds opened in 1981.

Captain Americas opened back in 1971. McDonalds on Grafton St opened in 1977. KFC has been here since 1972. Italian owned chippers have been here since the 30s. The first Chinese eateries opened in the 1960s. The first posh Indian restaurant, the Radjoot Tandoori, was established in 1971.

Your mother is wrong. There were much, much fewer restaurants back in the 80s, the country was much poorer, people ate out far less, the choice of food was a lot more limited but the well heeled did eat out in restaurants - it's just that it was much less common than today.

Things were indeed bleak in the 80s but if your family were middle class, as mine was, it wasn't a bad time to be a child.

Ded_Zebra

foggy_lad wrote: »

Is this a school graduation we are discussing here? if so then most schools except the poshest only ever had a debs ball and the practice of going to more that one debs was extremely rare, then the American influenza arrived and we get graduations as well as debs and it is common as muck for lads and girls to go to several debs balls.

When I had my debs it was a big occasion but has been cheapened by the Americanisation of Irish society.

There were very few places where normal people could afford to eat out in more than a few times a year, restaurants were only for family occasions and anniversaries etc

Graduation(from School) was not a big deal as it did not exist for most schools.

No college graduation. Should have been clearer in the op!

Ah, the "hungry 80's"..

I remember it well.....

Winterlong

There were even restaurants in Sligo in the early 80s. It really was not that grim a time to be growing up IMO.

Peregrinus

Ded_Zebra wrote: »

My mother is for ever telling me that in Dublin in the 80's there was no such thing as a restaurant.

Of course there were restaurants in the 1980s, and long before. But eating out was (relative to earnings) much more expensive then that it is now, so most people ate out rarely, and there were many fewer restaurants.

Ded_Zebra wrote: »

Specifically we were talking about her graduation, she is saying that it was't major celebration back then to graduate. No one in her class made a big deal of it, apparently. I find this hard to believe.

You should believe it; it's true. I graduated from TCD in 1984 (though the commencement ceremony may in fact have been in early '85; I don't recall) and after the ceremony I went out for lunch (in a restaurant off Dame Street) with my parents. My brother and sisters didn't come to the ceremony, or to the lunch. I had no celebrations with any classmates, and there was nothing organised for the class as a whole. There were quite a number of commencement ceremonies that we could have attended, and we chose whichever one suited us, so different class members attended different ceremonies, and some didn't bother to attend a ceremony at all. All of that was perfectly typical.

Nothing specific to Dublin.

Across the Britain and Ireland, there were restaurants...but going out was much more of an event, much rarer. These days it's almost seen as an alternative to cooking a meal, back then it was something planned, something to dress up for, to think about for weeks.

Mena Mitty

I wouldn't have been familiar with dining out in the 80's but the few I do remember are Woolworths, a place called Sabrina's in a basement on Mary Street, Solomen Grundy's pizza house and the '51' on South King Street which was short lived. Burgerland on Baggot Street. Wendy's on the Quays and Bewleys.

Mike Litoris

Faith+1 wrote: »

Christ the 80's sound miserable.

As a kid the 80's were fcukin' awesome! I do remember being mad scared of adulthood though. It seemed like everyone was struggling.

Peregrinus

Thinking back, there were plenty of restaurants back then in Dublin city centre. What has changed since the '80s is the large number and variety of restaurants in the suburbs.

The business lunch was a much bigger thing in the 80s than it is now, and a lot of the restaurants were geared towards that market.

mariaalice

There were restaurants but it was very expensive and eating out except in hotel or golf clubs was not common, lots of shops like Clerys and Arrnots has little restaurants, when my brother graduated form Trinity even though he had gone to DIT we went to Bewleys and we weren't the only ones doing that. There was a burger restaurant at the top of Grafton street which is still there and that was considered very cool at the time even to work in it.

People don't seem to realise what a wealthy country we have become.

Estrellita

Ded_Zebra wrote: »

So AH, is there any knowledgeable people here old enough to remember the 80's to confirm this one way or the other?

Listen to your Mother, ya cheeky pup. When she said there was no such thing as restaurants in the 80's, it's more likely that she meant few people could afford them.

As Ireland recovers from the most recent recession, you think you've had it hard. If you had been a kid in the 80's you'd know what it was like to not even have a sliced pan in the house. They were grim times, when many left the country and their families behind to find work. I remember my Mother crying in her room because my Father had gone to England to find work. There was not a morsel of food wasted, not like now. I go loopy if I see one of my kids waste food. But they will never understand the hardship.

There might as well have been no restaurants, because we never saw them. That's what your Mother likely means.

HensVassal

Mayfair Grill on O'Connell St.