James Toner's

Lonely Planet review

Toner's, with its stone floors and antique snugs, has changed little over the years and is the closest thing you'll get to a country pub in the heart of the city. The shelves and drawers are reminders that it once doubled as a grocery shop. The writer Oliver St John Gogarty once brought WB Yeats here, after the upper-class poet - who only lived around the corner - decided he wanted to visit a pub.

After a silent sherry in the noisy bar, Yeats turned to his friend and said, 'I have seen the pub, now please take me home.' We always suspected he was a little too precious for normal people, and he would probably be horrified by the good-natured business crowd making the racket these days too. His loss.