Restaurant in Dublin, Ireland
Serious kitchen, low-key room, easy to book.
Hera is a gastropub inside the JUNO pub on Dorset Street Lower that earns its reputation through precise Irish cooking — Carlingford oysters, Achill lamb, smoked cod tarama — and service that's relaxed without being slack. Easy to book by Dublin standards, it's the right choice for a date or low-key celebration where you want the food to lead without the formality of a tasting-menu room.
Hera sits inside JUNO, a red-brick pub on Dorset Street Lower in Dublin 1, a stretch of the city that doesn't attract much dining attention. That's your opportunity. The cooking here draws on high-quality Irish ingredients — Carlingford oysters, Achill lamb — and gives them international lift through combinations like lamb and harissa Scotch eggs or chorizo with preserved lemon and basil aioli. The room has wood panelling, soft lighting, and a quiet confidence that suits a date or a low-key celebration better than a loud group night out. Booking is easy by Dublin standards, which makes this one of the more accessible good-meal options in the city right now.
The format here is gastropub, but the kitchen is cooking at a level above what that label usually implies. Head chef Joe Smith has built a menu with a pub-cooking foundation and then pushed it in directions that make the food genuinely interesting. The smoked cod tarama with homemade crisps is the kind of dish that earns word-of-mouth: well-executed, flavour-forward, and specific enough to feel considered rather than crowd-pleasing. The chicken and mushroom butter, served with sourdough focaccia, is the sort of thing you order once and immediately want again. Brown butter and miso tart closes the meal on a note that's both familiar and a little surprising , comfort with an edge.
The ingredient sourcing is doing real work here. Irish produce at this price point often gets mentioned as a selling point without delivering on it. At Hera, Carlingford oysters and Achill lamb aren't decorative name-drops; they're the structural basis of dishes that depend on quality raw material to work. That matters if you're deciding between this and somewhere that imports its way to a similar menu.
Service at Hera deserves its own paragraph, because it's what separates a good meal from a complete evening. The front-of-house is run by a young Dublin team with what reviewers have called sang-froid composure , relaxed, attentive, and unperformative. For a special occasion, that balance is harder to find than most restaurant guides acknowledge. You get looked after without being managed, which is the right register for a gastropub that's cooking at this level. If you've eaten at somewhere like Bastible and found the room a little formal for the occasion, Hera's service style is the correction.
Arriving via the JUNO pub is part of the experience rather than a logistical inconvenience. A pre-dinner Guinness at the bar before moving through to the restaurant is a sensible way to use the setup, and it takes some of the pressure off arrival timing. For a date or a birthday dinner, the transition from pub to restaurant gives the evening a natural structure without requiring you to make it one. The address is 58 Dorset Street Lower, Dublin 1 , easily reached from the city centre, and not a neighbourhood where you'll be competing with post-work crowds for a taxi.
Hera works leading for: a date where you want the food to be the talking point; a birthday dinner for someone who prefers character over ceremony; or a group of three or four who want a proper meal without the formality of somewhere like Patrick Guilbaud. It is less suited to large groups or anyone who needs a private dining room. If you're planning a night out that starts with drinks and moves into dinner without a sharp gear change, the JUNO pub-to-Hera-restaurant format handles that naturally.
For context on where Hera sits in Dublin's broader dining picture, the city has several restaurants working with Irish ingredients at higher price points , Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen, Glovers Alley, and D'Olier Street all offer more formal tasting-menu experiences. Hera sits at a different level: more casual, easier to book, and better value if what you want is a satisfying meal rather than a full production. Ireland also has strong regional options worth knowing , Liath in Blackrock, Aniar in Galway, and Bastion in Kinsale all approach Irish produce at comparable or higher ambition levels, but none of them are in Dublin 1 on a Tuesday night when you want something good without planning weeks ahead.
Booking is direct , this is not a restaurant where you need to set an alarm for reservation windows. A few days' notice should be sufficient for most nights; weekends may warrant a week's lead time. There is no dress code information published, but the gastropub setting and relaxed service culture suggest smart casual is the right register. The address is 58 Dorset Street Lower, D01 EP86 , accessible by bus from the city centre. See our full Dublin restaurants guide for more options across the city, or browse the Dublin hotels guide if you're visiting from outside the city. For drinks before or after, the Dublin bars guide covers the broader scene.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Awards | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hera | Forming part of JUNO, a larger red-brick pub where you can enjoy a pre-dinner Guinness, this bustling gastropub comes with wood panelling, soft lighting and a subtle elegance. Its menu has a pub-cooking base but is given some enticing international twists. Take the classic Scotch egg, for instance, which might come in a lamb and harissa form, or perhaps a chorizo version with preserved lemon and basil aioli. High-quality Irish ingredients, from Carlingford oysters to Achill lamb, underpin the dishes’ success. To finish, the brown butter and miso tart is a real treat.; Joe Smith, the head chef, is doing some very delectable things in the Hera kitchen — you simply have to have the smoked cod tarama with homemade crisps and a glass of Kinnegar beer, and we would happily smoosh Hera’s chicken and mushroom butter all over Remus’s sourdough focaccia for the foreseeable future. Such bang-to-rights cooking is just what Dorset Street and this forgotten slice of D1 needs, and when you ally the food with the truly excellent, sang-froid service of the young Dubs who run the room, then Hera pushes all the buttons. | Easy | — | ||
| Patrick Guilbaud | Irish - French, Modern French | €€€€ | Michelin 2 Star | Unknown | — |
| Bastible | Modern Irish, Modern Cuisine | €€€€ | Michelin 1 Star | Unknown | — |
| Host | Nordic , Modern Cuisine | €€ | Unknown | — | |
| mae | Southern, Modern Cuisine | €€€ | Unknown | — | |
| Matsukawa | Kaiseki, Japanese | €€€€ | Unknown | — |
A quick look at how Hera measures up.
No dress code is enforced. The room has wood panelling and soft lighting inside a red-brick pub, so the tone is relaxed but not sloppy. Smart-casual is a reasonable read — you won't feel out of place in jeans, but you also won't be overdressed in a blazer.
Hera sits within JUNO, a pub on Dorset Street Lower, and a pre-dinner drink at the bar is part of how the evening flows. Whether bar seating is available for a full meal isn't confirmed in available details, but arriving via the JUNO bar is standard practice rather than an afterthought.
A few days' notice is generally enough — this isn't a restaurant where reservation windows sell out weeks in advance. That makes it a reliable option for last-minute plans, which is a genuine advantage over tighter Dublin spots like Bastible.
Bastible on South Circular Road is the closest comparison in ambition and neighbourhood-restaurant format, but harder to book. Host and mae both operate at a similar casual-but-serious register. If you want a more formal room with bigger credentials, Patrick Guilbaud is the step up — though the price and formality gap is significant.
Yes, for the right kind of occasion. Hera works well for a birthday dinner where the guest of honour values cooking over ceremony, or a date where the food is the point rather than the setting. The service is notably assured for a room of this size, which matters more for a special evening than the pub-format surroundings.
Hera is a gastropub inside JUNO, so the room has pub-scale dimensions rather than a private-dining setup. Small groups of four to six should be fine with advance booking, but if you're planning a large celebration requiring a dedicated private space, check directly with the venue before committing.
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