After years living abroad, Irishman Colm Dalton's search for home has led him to rate 151 Irish pubs in 50 countries. Now he rates the best of the best in the Irish capital.

Colm Dalton is torn. "This is a nightmare decision," he says. "To choose five! It's like choosing your favourite child."

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Born in Dublin to Dubliner parents, Colm Dalton was raised in County Kerry and now resides in London. Since 2017, he has explored the global lure of the Irish pub, rating pubs and pints in cities from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

(Credit: Colm Dalton)

But if anyone knows pubs, it's this displaced Irishman who's on a mission to visit every Irish pub on Earth.

Dalton, an Associate Lecturer at University College London, admits the project started "as a joke". But when he recounted his adventures on his website Publican Enemy, he soon found a devoted audience. "People would say, 'Do you know there's one in Mongolia? There's one in Brazil!' It started off as crazy idea; now it's got a life of its own."

Raised in Kerry and based in London for the past decade, he muses that absence makes the heart grow fonder: "When you move away from your country, you try to connect to it in any way." As of October 2025, he's visited 151 Irish pubs in 50 countries.

But Dublin pubs are "special," says Dalton, who was born in Dublin and has travelled there yearly to visit family ever since. "Dublin was one of the biggest cities in the British Empire; they had more money, so a lot have this Victorian ornate wooden glamour, which I think is beautiful. And you see literary connections in Dublin pubs. You can drink where your legendary alcoholic writer hero drank."

Dublin is also the birthplace of Guinness, so a classic pub experience here starts with a creamy black pint. "Guinness is a winter drink," says Dalton. "That's when it's at its best." And the city's posh past doesn't belie its legendary Irish

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