Urban Brewing — Restaurant in Dublin

Urban Brewing. Beautiful location and a promising menu, but the experience didn’t fully deliver. Some dishes were great, others underwhelming. Service lacked warmth, and the surprise charges on the bill left a bad aftertaste.

I visited Urban Brewing today with a friend, drawn in by the carefully curated and varied menu that gave off the impression of natural, high-quality cooking. Overall, the experience was a bit of a mixed bag.

We ordered a snack (selection of house-made dips) and three tapas: the endive salad, grilled seabream, and battered halloumi. We also shared the ribeye steak.

🔸 The dips were interesting but inconsistent. The spiced hummus had a nice kick, but the actual chickpea flavor was barely there. The tomato and black olive dip was more successful — bold and flavorful (especially if you’re a fan of olives like I am). The third, which I believe was butternut squash with cheese, lacked flavor intensity and had a slightly lumpy texture. Honestly, the last two felt more like side dishes than spreadable starters.

🔸 The endive salad was one of the highlights — great crunch from the walnuts, nice contrast with the goat cheese and blood orange, all served in little endive “spoons”. However, the lower leaves were barely dressed, which made the dish feel a bit incomplete.

🔸 The seabream was fresh and well cooked, paired nicely with tomato, olives, and capers. A good portion size for a tapa.

🔸 The battered halloumi was a letdown — too heavy. Thick slices of cheese plus the batter made it overly filling, and we couldn’t finish it. Disappointingly, they don’t offer takeaway for leftovers, which meant perfectly good food went to waste.

🔸 The ribeye steak was tender and cooked to perfection. Great touch with the sauce on the side!— one of the best parts of the meal.

❌ Where the experience really soured was with the bill: nearly €8 for a bottle of water and over €13 added as a “service charge”, which we were not informed about. On top of that, I’ve just noticed we were overcharged on the starter. The staff weren’t particularly warm or communicative either, which didn’t help.

💭 Final thoughts: Urban Brewing has clear culinary potential, and there are dishes I’d still like to try! — but the lack of transparency, food waste, and underwhelming service made this visit fall short of...

We had booked a table for 7, and usually that means that all the people at the table will eat at the same time and be free to order whatever is on the menu. But not here. They brought us two separate menus and said that everyone at the table needed to pick from the same (one) menu. We could pick either menu, but everyone had to have (things from) the same one. Why??? There will be people at the next table ordering food from the other menu, why can you bring it to their table but you couldn't possibly to ours? What would happen if you tried? Has anyone ever tried? Then they told us that they couldn't serve us all at the same time (then why take bookings for large groups?), so some people got their food 20 mins before others. I thought that tapas would be too small for me (you know, 'tapas' to me indicates 'small dishes'), so I went for one of the 'large plates' (which to me indicates 'large plates'). Well, my 'large plate' was two tiny pieces of duck breast, rather lonely on the plate with no side. I had to order the side extra, which was a small bowl of potato wedges and which I got 5 mins after the miniature duck breast pieces although the waitress said she'd make sure they come together. That cost me €34 (for the 'large plate') + €7.25 for wedges = €41.25 + 12.5% service charge (How many times must people complain here and how many times will you apologise and promise to change that before you actually change it?) = €46.40. And in the end we were told that if we wanted to pay separately, we could only split the bill 4 ways. So we had to Revolut the money between us. To me, the quality of food was average, and these are some pretty ludicrous rules, so I don't understand how they're getting such good reviews. But if you're OK with all that, I suppose it's an...

I was drawn in by the photos showing the same crypt areas used by EPIC. Those must be old and I don’t believe those areas are in use.

We walked in on a Sunday night without reservations. That eliminated our chance of an outdoor table, so we were placed in a corner actually adjacent to the bar. I had never seen a table arrangement and this meant I would spend the meal with a view of a corner when I wasn’t looking at my wife.

From the name, I envisioned this to be a gastropub, instead it’s a tapas bar which had excellent food.

The acid on the halibut ceviche was excellent, I wanted to sop it all up. The burrata flatbread was also unique. The toppings were uneven due to the moisture of the dough which created a lot of bubbles. Still a terrific choice.

It fell apart on the service. They had excellent wine by the glass choices. When I asked a server for a glass, he had no idea of what I was asking for even though it was listed. He came back with a book, said they don’t offer that one any longer (still on the menu though). He left a menu, then left for good.

I never got a glass of wine or we never got a second bottle of sparkling water. I had my back to the room so it sounded as if things had picked up. So the staff had gotten overwhelmed.

I was pretty disappointed we didn’t have a better service experience.

The funny thing was, we basically had the bartender in our lap all night. He could see we had empty drink glasses but didn’t say a word. He was doing craft cocktails all night so maybe table awareness...