Belfast Food

Belfast Food is a band from Rijeka that has played Irish folk music on a solid rock backing under this name since October 1996. Their best-known songs include "Da si tu", "Van iz grada" and "Šporki stari grad", and alongside their own songs they have made Croatian versions of Irish and Australian classics.

The story starts in the early 1990s, when three students of the secondary music school in Rijeka, Marko Anić, Hrvoje Hodak and Sebastian Mavrić, met in Anić's flat to listen to records from the Irish scene, songs by the Dubliners, the Chieftains and the Pogues. They were soon playing them in public around Rijeka. Erik Malnar, who then played in his own band GIPSS and paid tribute to the Beatles in Les Beat with Bobo Grujičić and Alen Širola, joined them on stage one night and came up with the idea of a real Irish band.

In the summer of 1996 the trio, then called Ima tu neshto, and Les Beat began playing together. Their first concert, at the Bikers Days motorcycle meeting in Pula, brought an offer to record a CD, and after two concerts at the club Grga in Grobnik, Malnar renamed the band Belfast Food. Their first album, Live in Rijeka, came out in September 1997, recorded at a concert in Rijeka held around the Irish and the Croatian Easter. Zašto zato followed, both released by Kondorcomm of Zagreb.

In 2002 they moved to Dallas Records, which released Melodije Irske i Kvarnera (2002), Zeleni album (2006), the double CD and DVD Live in Tvornica (2008) and Očekivanja (2016). Hodak left and the band carried on as a five-piece, and from 2004 Marko Jurić took over the drums from Grujičić. The line-up is Malnar on vocals, guitars and banjo, Širola on bass, Anić on accordion, flute, trombone and acoustic guitar, Mavrić on violin and Jurić on drums.

Belfast Food write their own songs, joining the Irish sound with other styles and, lately, electronic touches, and still play Irish originals at their concerts. On the Rijeka rock scene they stand apart from the harder, alternative line of bands such as Let 3. Their hits include "Van iz grada", "Trivijalna stvar" and "Lagano, lagano", and their covers include "Rocky Road to Dublin", "Dirty Old Town" as "Šporki stari grad" and "Waltzing Matilda" as "Mate i Matilda". New singles such as "Svira muzika", "Stela" and "Sretne ulice" followed in 2025 and 2026.