An oasis on the edge of Keleti: the Derby büfé

Such a place is the Derby Büfé, a peculiar enclave more than a hundred years old in our district, on the edge of our neighbourhoods, at Baross tér 6, diagonally opposite the monumental, soot-blackened building of Keleti pályaudvar. It took its name from the old racecourse, long lost to the dust, and perhaps that is why something of the excitement of the trotting races has stayed in it, the last shared refuge of winners and losers. The former wind-down spot of trainers and drivers is today an eclectic retro pub, where the faded romanticism of the twentieth century stubbornly resists time.

When you walk in, you are met not only by the smell of excellent beer, but by the unavoidable past itself. In the corner an old jukebox pours out melodies: its repertoire runs from the hits of the seventies all the way to the heavy chords of Metallica, and the rhythmic hum of the machine accompanies the afternoon reveries. The selection does not recall the refinement of the gentlemen’s salons of Buda, yet it keeps strict order in this bustle around the railway station.

The Derby stubbornly guards its own bourgeois dignity: with its deliberate pricing it weighs on pharmacy scales who it lets in through its walls. You cannot drop in here for a dubious wine from a jug, measured out for a few twenty-forint coins; the prices of the more upmarket Bernard beers and the quality spirits are reasonable, but they put a firm wall between the outside world and the peace within. This invisible yet insurmountable filter keeps away the people of dubious intentions and the foul-smelling ones who are looking for cheap intoxication, offering a decent refuge to those who seek not dissolution, but bourgeois calm.

This is how the place’s peculiar yet respectable symbiosis comes about. At the elbow rests by the counter, the much-experienced Budapest taxi drivers, escaping from their yellow cars for a quick black coffee or a small spritzer, sit peacefully side by side with the loud football fans, calmed here, on their way to matches at the nearby Puskás Aréna. And alongside them, as in a modern Babel, curious foreign guests join in, boldly stepping across from the gleaming walls of the neighbouring new IntercityHotel, looking for the real, genuine Pest reality instead of sterile hotel comfort.

The regulars, whom the spirit of the place refers to only as „Derby-treated patients”, thus share the peace of the square quietly and safely with the travellers. Above the threshold the old, nostalgic neon sign still shines, although the folding parasols now partly hide it from the world. When the afternoon sunlight breaks through the dust cloud over Baross tér and lights up the worn furniture of the stand-up bar, one understands: the Derby is not just a pub. It is a piece of recorded time, where the feel of life in the eighties of the last century is still alive, and where with every glass of beer we come a little closer to ourselves.