Fairytale of Budapest – Jack Doyle’s Irish pub provides the perfect Christmas drink

Lively chatter fills the dark-wood space of Jack Doyle’s, English, Hungarian and Italian, interspersed with the occasional clack of beer glass on wood and swoosh of the kitchen doors as another platter is delivered. A carefully selected jangle of background music at natter level underscores the satisfying harmony.

This is what a real pub sounds like.

It’s also familiar music to the ears of Charles Griffin and Elvira Zoller, one a publican from West Cork, the other a former member of the bar staff at Beckett’s, Budapest’s most prominent Irish pub back in the 1990s.

“I first came here in the early 2000s,” says Charles, his erstwhile saloon in Ireland’s south-western corner the centrepiece of a photo montage of traditional pub façades filling one corner. “I started looking for a place to open pretty much straight away.”

The location they found is unusual from two standpoints. First, this stretch of the city centre, several blocks in from the Danube, was pretty barren, with little apparent passing trade from hotels or bar crawls. Secondly, it’s steeped in Hungarian history.

The pedestrianised lane here, Pilvax köz, takes its name from the café that once stood here, the meeting place for the Hungarian revolutionaries of 1848. It was opened by Viennese coffee master Herr Pillvax, who had followed his future wife here, a Hungarian, then Magyarised his surname.

Although it’s not 100% certain which door this was, as the whole block was demolished in 1911, a Café Pilvax reopened here a decade later.

When Charles ran his expert eye over the site nearly a century later, its heritage wasn’t the priority. “It’s always good to have a corner location, that way people see you from different directions. When we first came here, it was the Paprika restaurant. Between the jigs and the reels, we didn’t need to do too much with it, just add a few pub furnishings.”

What they didn’t do was deck the place out in identikit Irish pub paraphernalia. In a world blighted by faux taverns and cod Celtic, Jack Doyle’s has been a touchstone of authenticity, its walls slowly filling with souvenirs of a shared past. Féile music festival posters rub shoulders with signed rugby shirts and tickets from the 2003 World Cup in Australia.

Sport is still beamed on six screens, oval- and round-ball action from around the world, as well as NFL, the weekly schedule chalked up on a board by the bar.

Live music became a regular fixture, though again, not so loud that couples couldn’t find a quiet corner to chat. With a summer terrace, too, Jack Doyle’s began to take off around the time of Budapest’s serious tourist boom, from 2014-15. A core staff stayed in place and before too long, nowhere else in Hungary was shifting more Guinness.

“We train staff to pour it properly – quality depends on selling in volume,” says Charles, decades of experience of running Irish pubs under his belt.

Food, of course, has always been essential, all-day breakfasts, fish & chips and burgers, quality again at the forefront. T-shirts, Peaky Blinders caps in black and grey, all proclaimed ‘Jack Doyle’s Living the Dream’ as a tenth anniversary came and went in 2019.

Then came lockdown.

Now reopened, Jack Doyle’s hasn’t lost its moxie, only a couple of staff members, the menu tailored for easier service – although 160 covers is still the norm of a busy sports Saturday. The sign over the bar, ‘Great Food Served Here’, remains as valid as ever. Burger sauces are still homemade. Peter Ryan O’Driscoll still strums at weekends. The toilet signs still read buachaillí/cailíní for boys and girls.

O’Hara’s Irish Red now replaces Kilkenny, cider comes in Irish Magners and Magyar MadDog varieties. Guinness, Heineken, cider and Hungarian Soproni can be ordered by the pitcher or by the pint from the long bar counter still propped up by the expat regulars delighted to get their pub back.

The back bar, however, hints at a more inclusive future, the gin shelf, the sought-after brands of Irish whiskey. 

As the nightlife dynamic of Budapest mutates, the pre-shutdown inundation of foreign party-seekers around Kazinczy utca consigned to the past, not least also due to pressure from local residents, so boulevards in Buda and other hubs in Pest have come into their own.


More than anything, they have been reclaimed by Hungarians, as tourism becomes diverse and discerning. Long-term expats now here for the duration cherish and respect their city.

Launching Jack’s Whiskey Club, members able to sample rare brands and benefit from loyalty cards, Charles is very aware of his key domestic audience. Tastings and presentations are in the pipeline.

First, though, Christmas. The Shane MacGowan quote about drunks, non-drunks and higher spiritual values, displayed here verbatim, still exudes universal appeal.


Although Jack Doyle’s can’t offer the full package for Christmas parties this year – platters are no problem – there’s a tangible groundswell of Yuletide bonhomie. Guinness will flow and at some point, the boys of the NYPD choir will be singing Galway Bay.

Carved behind the bar, the wise words of legendary GAA commentator Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh also ring out. Appreciated by many when enunciated on Irish TV’s Late Late Show during the initial shock of lockdown in March 2020, they read: Dúiseacht le dúthracht le breacadh an lae! – ‘Wake with enthusiasm at the dawning of the day.’