Doyle’s Café

Walking into Doyle's Café, the beer-soaked restaurant and watering hole located on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain, is a history lesson waiting to happen. Dating back to 1882, the old-school taproom has been a hot spot for politicos and celebs. It's a must-see for those wanting to experience a true Boston landmark, minus the commercialized glitz seen in other touristy locales scattered throughout the city.

The walls at Doyle’s Café, near the Green T stop on the Orange Line, are plastered with memorabilia and artifacts mainly from Irish-American heavyweights. Pictures of Boston politicians, mostly of Irish decent, adorn the walls.

There’s a mural featuring the late Ted Kennedy and a slew of Doyle’s Café patrons, a roster of both local and national politicians including former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. On St. Patrick’s Day in 1988, the youngest Kennedy brother and former Massachusetts senator who recently passed away from a brain tumor, helped dedicate the backroom to his maternal grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald.

While the food at Doyle’s Café is a notch above the typical pub grub, the hot spot is known for its beer. In fact, Doyle’s is the first to put Samuel Adams Boston Lager on tap and is home to one of New England’s largest selections of draft brews. The bar, a mahogany structure that survived the days of prohibition when Doyle’s was a speakeasy, is more than 125 years old.

The touristy Bull & Finch pub, inspiration for the long-running NBC sitcom “Cheers,” may be Boston’s most recognized watering hole. But, Doyle’s Café continues to be the big screen’s quintessential New England Irish bar and comes in a close second as a pop culture landmark.

Doyle’s Café has been featured in a slew of made-in-Boston flicks making cameos in "Mystic River" and was a location in the Dane Cook flick "My Best Friend's Girl." Also, actor Mel Gibson who was in town filming "Edge of Darkness," was spotted there during filming in 2008. And in "21," Jim Sturgess's character Ben Campbell downs a few and strolls down Washington Street with his mom played by Helen Carey.

HelloMetro Tip: Stop by on St. Patrick's Day for one of Boston's biggest celebrations, which includes bagpipe performances throughout the day. Also, tourists who visit the nearby Sam Adams brewery, located at 30 Germania St., can stop by after the tour to get a free beer at Doyle’s Café.
 

- by Sam Baltrusis, Boston Reporter for HelloMetro  (Click to leave a message)

Sam Baltrusis

Sam Baltrusis has worked for WHDH.com, Spike-TV, VH1, Independent News, Seventeen, Newsweek, and as a regional stringer for The New York Times. He's currently a full-time freelance editor and writer in Boston, where he's an instructor for Mediabistro.com and contributes to various regional publications including Boston Spirit Magazine. Sam also publishes a successful pop culture site, LoadedGunBoston.com, and was recently featured on WCVB-TV's "Chronicle" and Boston's NPR affiliate WBUR.