White’s Tavern

Great old cosy traditional pub, nestled away in winecellar entry, with a great bar with plenty of selection of drinks and a lovely open fire, traditional live music some nights, and a function room upstairs. Been here loads of times, great traditional interior with that old feel to it, great pub.

Tucked away with some great nights.
If you like your music good and cheesy, check out Friday nights.
Cinema night appears on certain Sunday’s. Best part it’s free, with free popcorn, blankets and wings. What better way to end a weekend.

Great place for all round entertainment.
Film club is great. Free pop corn and wings.
Always new promo deals and offers on.
Some of the friendliest staff in Belfast.

We stopped in for Belfast’s oldest pub. It is dark and a neat building. Atmosphere is exactly what we expected.
They have wonderful servers and an ample supply of beers to choose from. This is their highlight!
The food was a real disappointment. We ordered several dishes. The soup of the day was tomato basil and was average. The Irish stew was mostly potatoes and gravy. If you add a LOT of pepper you can make it palatable! We also ordered the fish & chips. When this dish is your highlight, the vinaigrette on your salad should not be the highlight! The fries would have been the highlight if the grease soaked fish wasn’t laid on top of them. The heat needs to be turned up on the fryer as that was the greasiest fish I’ve ever seen! It actually pooled on the fish as it cooled a bit!

Visited White’s for the first time when my daughter was over from Scotland on a short break, Lovely atmospheric wee pub. If you are a visitor to Northern Ireland and are looking for an old pub White’s has the beams, open fire, rustic feel and a warm welcome, go here it is even candlelit ! Fortunately the loos are very modern day and spotless ! Ryan the barman was fantastic, really helpful and charming. Food was simple but good. Visit, you won’t regret it !

Recently taken over (again) and renovated, there is something so homely about Whites.
Hidden down alleys on three sides, and behind a low green door Whites is a joy for me at any time, but especially winter. Catch sight and a wave of heat from the turf fire as you walk in and just try and leave after one drink.
You’ll find you can’t, it’s just too cosy. As the bar is small, they don’t have tonnes of staff, so service sometimes can be a little slow, but once you are settled in here, what’s the rush?
They also do some pretty tasty pub grub too, but don’t leave the food part too late as they top serving at 6.

I was in Whites last Saturday (14 December) for a couple of hours. I bought a round of drinks for myself and my friends, and when I brought them back to our table, realised that what I thought was two pints of Magners was actually two pints of Carlsberg.
I brought the two pints back to the bar, politely said that an innocent mistake had been made, and asked for two pints of Magners. I was told that if I wanted Magners I would have to pay again. This really shocked me.
The barman I was talking to gave me a few reasons why he wouldn’t replace them free of charge, including «you’ve drunk a bit of them». Less than 1 cm was gone from the top of the glass — just enough for me to determine that it was _​not_​what I ordered.
I ended up paying for two new pints, and mentioned to the barman that I hoped the small profit margin on two more pints would be worth losing me as a customer forever.

Amazing service amazing food. Very local dishes and gave me what I thought was a taste of the local culture. I had the Irish stew, which was a succulent braised Irish lamb, with seasonal veg covered in a rich gravy and an 8″ Yorkshire pudding. Also ate a Steak and Guinness pie, which was slow braised steak pieces and a rich Guinness gravy in a short crust pastry with a side of champ. If you are in the area this is a place you want to hit up. Oldest pub in Belfast 1630!

Fabulous old pub with great atmosphere and the oldest pub in Belfast apparently :-) would always go back for a pint or few :-)

Whites strikes me as a Belfast must. The food is good. I had something that isn’t a favorite– shepherds pie — and I enjoyed it. Drank Guinness and sampled a Northern Ireland cider which was crisp and not overly sweet as cider should be. This is the kind of place that North Americans tend to find impossible to resist .It’s old, it’s colorful. The service was also friendly and efficient. I went in the afternoon and that may be the optimal time.

Whites Tavern strikes me as a place that doesn’t really care if its the regarded as the most famous or best pub in Belfast. Its quite content to just exist as it has been for years without competing as a flashy pub. As it only take a few to fill the place I think people are attracted to its blasé approach, I think thats why its always packed. They’re not a new age bar with lots of new exciting trendy beers, they just do the standard and do it well.
Inside it can be a bit dark during daylight hours but with the open fire is blazing there is a nice rustic feel inside the pub. Upstairs is quite a surreal room as its just decorated to the max in a few different styles.
Yeah its great, take a look and if you need to get a babysitter… do it… check it out.

I’ve had some fantastically memorable nights in White’s Tavern. It’s mostly Christmas that I seem to be here, strange seeing that I’d rather chew off one of my own arms that indulge in festive shopping. But the fact is, I always seem to do my once-​a-​year catching up with friends (who live outside Belfast and come home for the silly season) in White’s. And the craic is always amazing, I haven’t had a bad experience there yet.
Once, a passing-​through English folk band asked the staff if they could play, all woolly jumpers, beards and Roll Out the Barrel. The happiest woman you’ve ever seen was keeping time with a spoon on a washboard. The punters went mad for them and it’s still probably the best gig I’ve ever been to. I’d love to know who they were. They may have told everyone but I had an awful lot of very good Guinness in me.
White’s is small, welcoming, charismatic and your clothes will smell of the lovely peat fire when you get home. I bet hundreds of thousands people from all over have had nights as amazing as mine.

There are good and bad things about White’s Tavern.
Good — the very nice and well priced food, served on huge plates and perfect for when you’re dying from the night before (as a barmaid sympathetically noted to us once).There’s also the roaring fire and general look and feel of the place, with its wooden beams and old style atmosphere. And the friendly staff. And just because — it’s one of those bars where everyone seems to reflect it, having a good night and being friendly to everyone because somehow the bar itself encourages it.
Bad — very busy on weekend nights, and in fact I avoid it then, preferring to go in the afternoon or early evening. The club upstairs, which I’ve never been to, is also supposed to get very busy. Which brings me to the main negative part about White’s, and why I don’t go there at nights — the toilets. Or should I say, toilet. There is ONE women’s toilet on the ground floor (which also doubles as the disabled loo), which is bloody annoying after you’ve had a few pints and you have to queue and some people don’t get that the point of going into the loo is to, em, pee or whatever, not do your bally makeup and chat to your little friends.
I assume because White’s is so old that it’s a listed building and therefore an extra loo can’t be added, but Jaysus. Sort something out before I burst!

White’s is one of those places I always try and take people to when they visit town. What I like about the bar is that it’s got to one of the cosiest places to sit and have a drink. On a cold day they usually have the fire roaring and the food itself has been consistently good.
In the evening it definitely gets a bit more rowdy with a mix of locals, randoms and at weekends, clubbers getting ready to head upstairs for a bit of dancing. The club area itself is pretty cool in that it looks like a 70’s living room. Battered furniture and cranky old light fittings give the place a bit of character and this lends itself to the club with is good unpretentious sweaty fun.
A must visit if you’re in Belfast.
Pros: Great character, excellent food, outdoor seating in summer.
Cons: The bar can get totally rammed at the weekend and in the run up to Xmas.

Although Belfast natives have more knowledgeable views of White’s than me, a relative newcomer to Belfast I favour this place very much.
I’ve been to the funk and soul night upstairs, which is tip top and am planning on going there next weekend. The night is moderately priced, about a fiver in and the tunes are great. Real floor fillers like James Brown, Rolling Stones, Motown or a bit of old skool like Groove is in the Heart or Brimful of Asha.
The crowd are usually mixed and up for a laugh. The one downside is the bar. I’m usually good at getting served at bars, employing by feminine charms, ie pushing through people! But the queue at the bar here is like Armageddon. I nearly killed the chancer who tried to get served in my place after I’d waited for a half an hour. I even got a high-​five from another disgruntled person fed up of waiting. This place probably does need an extension. There are simply too many people in the place. Sometimes it gets hard to dance too as people are so jammed into the bar. I’m not quite ready for staying at home with the crocheting yet, so I’m still young enough to put up with this. It really reminds of Doyles in Dublin, across the road from Trinity, in that it;s good for a sweaty, fun, unpretentious dance!
The downstairs bar is really cool. It’s like a traditional pub and has real atmosphere. A lovely place to come in with your mates for a catch up, but equally a great place to come for pints on a Saturday night.
The courtyard outside is usually good craic afterwards with lots of people milling about after the pub shuts. Sometimes in the summer, they get a Barbecue going, the smell of burgers and hotdogs tempting everyone in the vicinity.
Here is an interesting fact my housemate Sarah bestowed upon me– next time you’re in have a look at the glass bunnies in the cabinet beside on the bar. These cheap looking antiques are actually rare collectors items and are worth over £10,000 each! FACT! Ask the barman (as I did) and they will happily tell you!

White’s, in some ways is the single greatest and single worst bar in Belfast. How does that work?
It’s got such a great atmosphere because it just looks amazing. The ceiling is low, the fire is usually burning and they (apparently) pour a good Guinness. The food is also pretty good pub grub. I used to call in every Sunday with my ex-​boyfriend for a pint and a feed.
It’s usually heaving of a Saturday night. Uncomfortably so, actually. I don’t really like going upstairs to the club part because it just gets too warm and too full. If you aren’t parked in a spot near the bar, the round trip to get some beverages can take anything up to half an hour, which is far too long to wait when you’re parched!
The toilets are also fairly grim, so I tend to avoid them until absolutely necessary!
One great point in favour of White’s is the bbq they have going outside during the summer. No more worrying about the midnight munchies — just nip outside for a hotdog. Winner!

Had dinner here today. Small place, okay food. Chicken goujons were good, but waitress disappeared after serving our food and never returned. Chilling potatoes are interesting, and my friends roast beef special was great. Nice place for a pint…

There’s not much to add here that hasn’t already been said. However, I would like to attempt to clear up a few things for visitors to Belfast regarding where the «oldest bar» in Belfast is — we wouldn’t want a load of visitors returning to their home countries and claiming they’d all been to the oldest bar in Belfast, with some having been to Kelly’s Cellars, some to White’s Tavern, and others to McHugh’s. So here goes…
It depends on your definition. McHugh’s is Belfast’s oldest building, but it’s apparently uncertain as to what year it actually became a pub — it’s been suggested that this was in the mid-​18^th century. As far as I recall, the records don’t go back far enough to verify that it’s the oldest bar in Belfast, but it’s the oldest building. White’s Tavern has the oldest liquor license in Belfast but, as correctly reported by another Unilocaler, the business moved premises, presumably some time after Kelly’s Cellars opened.
— White’s had the first license
— McHugh’s is the oldest building
— It’s probable that Kelly’s is the oldest continuously licensed premises
As I said, that’s all to the best of my knowledge, and it will depend on you definition of the term «oldest bar». For my money, it’s probably Kelly’s, but visitors should have a pint in all three, just to make sure their bases are covered.

Love this bar and the disco upstairs.
Went here a few days ago for lunch. Had to drag my friend who wanted to go elsewhere but I promised her that she would not be disappointed.
Inside is dark and authentic with an open fire and a busy, chatty crowd. It feels like an Irish pub should feel.
The menu was immense with each item described as a paragraph review. I went for chicken curry with half rice and half chips and my friend ordered a ‘boxie’ as well as bangers and mash. When the food arrived she actually started to laugh. The plates are like big UFO’s — massive and deep and filled to the brim — the portions are awesome.
My friend had to put some of her stuff on another table because her plate was so big. I have to say the food was really, really, really, really good — my friend actually said and I quote ‘I haven’t had a meal like that anywhere in a long time’ and then proceeded to rave about the place all day.
The boxie is a potato, scallion and butter pie thingy — a real traditional Belfast treat!
The bill came to £24 for two mains, a starter and two alcoholic drinks — not bad at all.
As we left my friend held the door for two tourists and told them, without them asking; ‘Get the bangers and mash ’cause it’s beaut!’

Great pint, great patrons and great music. What more can I say? If you want a traditional Irish pub in Belfast this should be top of your list.
Smallish bar service area but the staff try their best to get to you fast. Guinness is some of the best I have drank in the North. Open fire is the cherry on the top.
Full of friendly tourists.
Highly recommended.

Dieser Pub ist der älteste in Belfast und zewichnet sich durch erwartungskonforme Gemütlichkeit aus. Man hat das Gefühl echte Iren anzutreffen und man ist nicht an den typischen Touri-​Orten.
Sehr leckeres Guiness und endlich mal wieder richtige tolle Essig-​chips :)