Roe & Co x Stock Kitchen 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/24/020

Some evenings at Belfast Whiskey Week linger long after the last dram is poured, and the pairing of Roe & Co Irish Whiskey with the kitchen craft of Danny Millar at Stock Kitchen was very much one of those occasions. Session 85 brought together two of Ireland's most forward-thinking voices in their respective fields — brand ambassador Wayne Devlin and one of Ulster's most celebrated chefs — for an evening that asked a genuinely provocative question: what happens when uisce beatha stops being the supporting act and takes centre stage alongside serious food?

About This Event

Reimagining the pillars of taste, where whiskey and food come together.

Join Roe & Co's Brand Ambassador Wayne Devlin and Danny Millar of Stock Kitchen, for a unique Whiskey and food pairing. Guests can expect a menu featuring Roe & Co's innovative expressions paired with tantalizing culinary delights to challenge you to reimagine your palette and sensory expectations.

Looking Back

Stock Kitchen, tucked into the fabric of Belfast's dining scene, is a venue that takes its ingredients as seriously as any distillery takes its grain and water. It was a fitting stage. The room carried that particular quality of a good Belfast evening — unhurried, convivial, with just enough edge of anticipation to keep things interesting. Guests arrived not quite knowing what to expect, which, as it turned out, was entirely the point.

Wayne Devlin has the gift that the best brand ambassadors possess: he communicates genuine enthusiasm without tipping into performance. His presentation of Roe & Co's expressions — a blend that draws on stocks from across Ireland's great distilling traditions — was grounded in the real story of the whiskey's character. Roe & Co is, at its core, a Dublin-born blend with a bold, fruit-forward personality, built around grain whiskey that gives it an approachability without sacrificing depth. Wayne walked guests through that architecture clearly, letting the liquid speak as much as his words did.

Danny Millar's menu, meanwhile, did something that lesser pairings events rarely manage: it challenged rather than flattered. Each course was constructed not simply to complement the whiskey on the table, but to pull something new out of it — a citrus note sharpened by a particular preparation, a spice that the grain whiskey seemed to reach toward. There was a sense of genuine dialogue between kitchen and distillery, the kind of thing that takes planning, tasting, and a willingness to discard the easy answer. Guests reported moments of genuine surprise, that slight recalibration of expectation that marks the best sensory experiences. For those curious about how Belfast Whiskey Week approaches the full spectrum of Irish whiskey culture, the Whiskey Map offers a useful geography of the distilleries and expressions that have shaped the festival programme.

At £30, Session 85 represented the kind of value that still feels almost unreasonable in the context of what was delivered — five considered pairings, expert guidance, and the rare pleasure of watching two professionals genuinely enjoy the work they'd made together. It sat comfortably among the festival's specialist tasting tier, a category that has produced some of BWW's most memorable evenings. If your appetite leans more toward the deep heritage of the island's distilling duchas, it's worth exploring what past sessions like Session 83: Bushmills History or the beautifully structured Session 50: Bushmills Causeway Collection offered by way of contrast — different expressions of the same enduring tradition.

What Session 85 ultimately demonstrated is that whiskey and food pairing, done well, isn't a gimmick or a garnish. It is its own form of seanchas — a telling of the story of a spirit through every sense available to us. Sláinte to Wayne, to Danny, and to every guest who came with an open palate and left with a richer understanding of what Irish whiskey can be.