Before the V&A Waterfront was a postcard, it was a working harbour with one pub. Ferryman's got there first, and almost four decades later it still owns the room with the best beams in Cape Town.
Published June 11, 2026 · By Daniel Okafor
Ferryman's Tavern opened in 1989 as the first tenant of the V&A Waterfront, and by the development's own account it has stood as the harbour's original Irish pub ever since. It occupies a converted Victorian locomotive shed at the Pierhead, the kind of building most cities knock down and Cape Town turned into a tavern.
The bones do the talking. Quarried bluestone walls, Oregon timber beams overhead, and solid teak pillars frame a downstairs bar built around a stone fireplace, with large windows that throw a clear line up to Table Mountain. There is a beer garden out front with a children's play area, so the whole spread runs from family lunch to late pint without changing rooms.
For sport, this is one of the easiest watches on the harbour. Several screens carry the football, cricket and rugby, and on a Springbok Test day the downstairs bar fills with green and gold against a backdrop of working boats and mountain. It is a confident fixture in the Cape Town sports bar scene, and our guide to the best sports bars in Cape Town places it among the city's most reliable match-day rooms.
Eat the pub fare it does well. The kitchen runs traditional Irish-pub plates alongside a 120-seat restaurant area of wooden tables and bentwood chairs, with the same mountain views set into the stone. Prices sit in fair mid-range territory for a Waterfront address, a $$ room where the building and the position are the real value. Our roundup of the best bars in Cape Town covers what lies beyond the harbour wall.
The crowd is the Waterfront's full mix. Visitors off the boats and the wheel, locals who have kept the place on rotation for years, and supporters who pack in early on Test days. Live bands play most evenings, so the room rarely runs quiet, and the energy lifts the moment the music starts.
Go early on a Test day, because the screens near the fireplace claim a crowd fast. For a calmer visit, a weekday lunch in the beer garden gives you the mountain, a pint, and room to breathe. Live music most nights makes the later sittings the loudest and the most fun.
Ferryman's slots neatly into a Cape drinking circuit. Down the coast, the Brass Bell pours on the rocks at Kalk Bay, while in town The Fireman's Arms and Mr Pickwick's keep the central crowd watered late.
Getting there could not be easier, which is half the point of a Waterfront pub. The harbour is a short drive or a MyCiTi bus ride from the city centre, with parking in the V&A garages and the Pierhead a flat walk from the Two Oceans Aquarium and the swing bridge. Arrive on foot from the Clock Tower side and you pass the working quay before the tavern opens up, beams and stone and the smell of the kitchen pulling you in. The approach sets the tone before the first pint.
What keeps Ferryman's on every Waterfront list is the simplest thing: it was here first and it still feels earned. A pub inside a Victorian engine shed, pouring through 35 years of Tests with Table Mountain in the window, is the rare harbour-front room that locals never ceded to the tourists. Judged on its own terms, it remains one of the most characterful pubs in Cape Town.
Sources: Ferryman's Tavern official site (ferrymans.co.za); V&A Waterfront, Ferryman's Tavern listing (waterfront.co.za); Tripadvisor, Ferryman's Irish Tavern reviews, 2026.