Zanzibar is such a perfect name for a theme pub, it nearly seems cheeky that an east African Spice Island managed to think of it first. It's what the O'Dwyer brothers, Liam and Desmond, are naming their latest venture on Ormond Quay on Dublin's northside, complete with Ali Baba urns and more palm trees than you'd find in the hothouse at the Botanic Gardens. This time the brothers have taken their inspiration from Morocco, North Africa and Turkey and with a £3 million budget they rebuilt the old Lawlor Briscoe building and filled it with the aforementioned palms and urns, as well as horseshoe arches, enormous, brass light-fittings and hand-painted tiles. The vast, four-storey space is firmly in the superpub category - it can accommodate at least 1,200 drinkers at a time. "I'm not into diddleye Irish pubs," says Liam O'Dwyer, and it is true that most newly fitted Dublin pubs are theme pubs, except we don't really consider them as such because the theme is oldtime Oirish with all the pretend antique pine and paraphernalia that implies.
The O'Dwyers have always been keen on a themed approach to drinking. They own a long list of hugely successful pubs including Bad Bobs, Break For The Border, Major Toms and Cafe en Seine: so, adopting an over-the-top Moorish style for their new pub is not as extraordinary as it might seem. What is surprising is that the architect on the job is Ross Cahill O'Brien who is known for his minimalism. "The idea was to open up the building," says Cahill O'Brien, "so we gutted the existing interior and put in high, vaulted ceilings and a gallery level that overlooks the main bar area on the ground floor." For ideas, they travelled to Spain to the Alhambra in Granada and to Cordoba, where the Royal Palace and the mosque are outstanding examples of Moorish architecture. It was in the palace that Cahill O'Brien got the inspiration for Zanzibar's yellow-tinted, vaulted ceiling with its magical-looking, star-shaped windows, while the gold obelisks on the roof at the front of the building were inspired from a mosque he visited in Cordoba. After that, the ideas for the interior came mostly from Liam O'Dwyer, who calls himself "the prop man" on the job. It's an apt term, given the theatricality of the place. He shipped the enormous, antique olive oil-urns from Sicily: they are so big they had to be brought over in pieces and assembled inside the pub. The highly atmospheric stained glass light-fittings are all salvaged. "I found some in Turkey, some in Morocco, all over the place really." The tall palm trees which dominate the ground floor are real, although it is intriguing to discover they have been "sort of embalmed" to keep them looking lush and green. Upstairs on the gallery there are private areas with cane chairs and lofty ceilings which overlook the dramatic bar downstairs with its mirrored arches and red and gold colour scheme. The nicest, and certainly the quietest, seating areas are upstairs to the front of the pub and have tall windows looking out on the Liffey.
Zanzibar is the brothers' first northside pub, albeit along a part of the quays which is fast becoming a satellite of Temple Bar and attracting the same type of drinkers. Earlier this year Pravda, another themed pub, opened around the corner in Liffey Street: it too is owned by experienced pub developers - the Thomas Read group - with a long track record of getting it right, particularly for the twentysomething market. This section of the quays is expected to be even more popular when the new footbridge across the Liffey is built. The O'Dwyers have been long enough in the business to know exactly who their customers are or are likely to be.
So, while Zanzibar might be a short stroll from the law courts, Liam is not relying on a pinstriped legal crowd: "They only go drinking on Friday" - which, let's face it, is not a lot of use to a sevenday-licence-holder. Instead, on a wintery Monday night in June, the music in Zanzibar was deafening and the place was buzzing with girls still young enough to get away with crop tops and spaghetti straps, and fashionably dressed young guys. And despite the Eastern promise of the place, there wasn't a djellaba in sight.