Roe & Co x Holohan's Pantry Food Pairing | Belfast Whiskey Week 2024

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 19 Jul 2024
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 3 min
Ref: BWW/24/396

Some evenings at Belfast Whiskey Week feel less like an event and more like a homecoming — and the HomeGrown Irish session at Holohan's Pantry was exactly that. On 19th July 2024, guests gathered in one of Belfast's most beloved dining rooms to explore Roe & Co Irish Whiskey alongside a bespoke three-course menu that celebrated the very best of what this island's larder has to offer. It was the kind of night that reminds you why uisce beatha — the water of life — has always belonged at the Irish table.

About This Event

Holohan's Pantry is the epitome of Irish cuisine. Our Collaborations with Holohan's starts with Roe & Co from Dublin, and we expect a 3 course bespoke meal with 4 drinks through the evening. Let's take the opportunity to experience the fantastic Roe & Co Irish Whiskey in the home of Belfast's finest Irish Cuisine. Each collaboration has been designed to showcase the whiskies with a mix of information about the brand and to highlight the wonderful local produce Ireland has to offer.

Looking Back

Holohan's Pantry has long held a quiet authority in Belfast's food scene. Tucked away but never hidden, it stands as a genuine expression of Irish cuisine — unfussy, deeply considered, and rooted in the seasons and the soil. It was the natural home for a collaboration built around the idea that Irish whiskey and Irish food are, at their best, expressions of the same duchas: that inherited sense of place and belonging that no marketing campaign can manufacture. When the two come together honestly, the results are something else entirely.

Roe & Co brings its own story to the table. Distilled in Dublin's Liberties — a neighbourhood with centuries of distilling history behind it — Roe & Co is a blended Irish whiskey that wears its craft credentials with confidence rather than noise. Smooth and approachable without sacrificing complexity, it presents well to the whiskey curious and rewards the more seasoned drinker in equal measure. Across the four drinks served through the evening, guests had the chance to move through different expressions and formats, each chosen to complement the food rather than compete with it.

The structure of the night was well-judged. A three-course meal with four pairings gives a host enough room to build a narrative — to let a whiskey open up as the palate adjusts, or to use a cocktail or highball serve to cleanse and reset between courses. Those present reported that the kitchen and the brand worked in genuine dialogue, with each pairing feeling purposeful rather than incidental. Local produce was central to the menu, which gave the whole evening a coherence that went beyond the glass: this was Irish food and Irish whiskey in conversation, not simply side by side.

Events like this are a cornerstone of what Belfast Whiskey Week does best. The festival has always believed that whiskey is better understood in context — alongside food, story, and place — rather than in isolation. For those who want to explore the wider landscape of Irish distilling, our Whiskey Map offers a useful guide to the geography behind the dram. And if the convivial spirit of the Holohan's collaboration appeals, it's worth noting that the festival's relationship with Irish distillery heritage runs deep — from evenings like this one all the way through to deep-dive sessions such as the Bushmills History MasterClass, which traces the longer arc of Ulster's distilling tradition.

At £55 a head for three courses and four whiskey experiences in one of Belfast's finest dining rooms, this session offered genuine value — not in the bargain-hunting sense, but in the rarer sense of leaving with more than you arrived with. A warm room, good food, honest whiskey, and the kind of conversation that follows when people are well fed and well poured: that's the HomeGrown Irish promise, and on this evening, Holohan's Pantry and Roe & Co delivered it without a word wasted. Sláinte.