“What an absolutely wank name for a pub,” Anton says to me as we cross over the street to the Chelsea Drugstore. “Like the posh people’s equivalent of calling your Chinese takeaway ‘Peking River’ or whatever.”
“That’s actually funny,” I say, examining my phone. “Because the building was an oriental food store up until recently, and according to the website it was originally a chemist.”
“Yeah I know,” says Anton.
Named after the short-lived miniature London shopping mall-cum-café-bar of the late 60s, which was itself modelled on Paris’ Drugstore of the Boulevard Saint Germain, opened in 1958, George’s Street’s new Chelsea Drugstore forsakes the ironically futuristic, flimsy, postmodern architecture of its namesakes for a yet still more malapropos late-art deco shopfront. It is neatly illuminated and eye-catching, its suggestiveness of exclusivity and wealth as vague as its nostalgia is. Inside, the spaciousness between tables and lower-than-average seating on the ground floor where we sit suggest casual restaurant dining more than they do drinking venue. This sense is further bolstered by table service, and though no food is as yet available to order, there are plans to introduce a menu in the near future. The drinks, meanwhile, are listed on swivelling menus that evoke a colour swatch, or oriental fan, with a cocktail listed per individual, thin, rectangular sheet. Non-cocktail drinks pile up towards the end, with both sides of the final two sheets being made use of, in a decision that bespeaks a lack of care or attention, ultimately, to how people incline to read and use things, despite the clear effort made in designing each page individually.
The cocktails themselves are an original selection of drinks, prepared from an imposing and comprehensive bar that, as is rare in Ireland, includes mescal, in its “Raimunda” (€12.50), a drink described by the menu as “fiery, smokey and zesty”. The second adjective, as tends to be the case with mescal, takes centre stage, but without entirely overpowering the fruitier notes. It is the first of what prove all to be enjoyable cocktail orders on our visit, with particularly favourable mention due to “Henry’s Elixir” (€12.50), a gin-based cocktail with overtones of cardamom that manages the rare feat of being wintry and refreshing at once. It remains to be seen what sort of appetite exists in Dublin for embedding oneself in an uneasy landscape of postcard anachronism to enjoy a high quality, innovative drinks menu, but if the Chelsea Drugstore’s looking backwards is a somewhat tired schtick, it’s more Coen brothers than Baz Luhrmann in its skirting around sheer bombast.
Anton is trying to replicate the now immortalised-in-meme pose of Leonardo DiCaprio-as-Jay Gatsby, holding aloft to perspective a champagne coupe with a wry smile. “The light in here is all wrong,” he says, grabbing his phone back from me. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
The Chelsea Drugstore
25 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2
www.thechelseadrugstore.ie
t: 01-6139093
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
Photos: Killian Broderick
