Taste the Festival Food Pairing Event | Belfast Whiskey Week 2023

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

Some events ask you to savour. Taste the Festival asked you to feast. On Friday 28th October 2023, event 88 brought together the full breadth of Belfast Whiskey Week's food collaborations under one glorious, calorie-laden roof at TradeMarket — four drams, five partners, and a meal that kept festival-goers well-fuelled long into the afternoon Expo. It was, without question, one of the most joyful sessions of the entire week.

Filed: 15 Jul 2023
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 4 min
Ref: BWW/23/428

About This Event

A filling Lunch, if you can handle it… This will fill you till dinner, and go doubt keep you going during the Expo. A look at all the Food Collaborations that we have had during the Festival: Tribal Burger: Burgers Pie Queen: Whiskey Pies Oh Donuts: Whiskey Donut Moon Gelato: Whiskey Ice Cream Chocolate Manor: Whiskey Chocolates Obviously we will be drinking some whiskies while we eat… Timeslot: 12pm-3pm Start Time: 1pm Duration: 2hrs Venue: TradeMarket Drinks: 4 Drams Type: Food Pairing Walking: Be Prepared to Walk around Belfast. Some of the areas & venues may not be fully accessible, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. Disclaimers Please note that individual dietary requirements are not being catered for with any food at this event. Each Brand/Distillery and Collaborative Partner have agreed to our Min/Max Pour Policy. Please Respect this, and enjoy your festival responsibly. Festival Participants who are deemed to be too inebriated, or are not respecting themselves, will not be permitted into events and venues. ALL Hosts/Ushers/Collaborators and Venue Staff have the right to refuse participants without question and recourse. Please Drink Responsibly. All events are only available to those 18 years old and over. Do not purchase tickets if you are under the age of 18. Be prepared to produce ID if required. Venue staff & ushers may ask you to provide ID when showing your valid tickets. You may be refused enter to events if you can’t prove your age. Some venues may change, if they do, you will be notified. All events are subject to changes out of the control of the festival organisers. Any issues, please contact us @belfastwhiskeyweek on socials, or via email on marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com or 07773675179 (8am-8pm) to discuss. NO Refunds will be given. Please only buy tickets if you are prepared to attend the event. Tickets are transferable. If you are going to transfer tickets please email, marketing@belfastwhiskeyweek.com

Looking Back

There is an old idea buried deep in the duchas of this island — that the table is where strangers become friends and good drink makes everything taste better. Event 88 took that idea and ran with it. Beginning at 1pm and running a generous two hours, this food pairing lunch at TradeMarket was conceived as a celebration of every collaborative partnership Belfast Whiskey Week had built with the city's food community throughout the 2023 festival. If you had been moving between events all week, this was the moment to sit down, breathe, and actually eat something worthy of the uisce beatha in your glass.

The lineup read like a love letter to Belfast's independent food scene. Tribal Burger — who had already made their mark across the festival week with events like Tribal Burger: Jameson (Meat the Family) and Tribal Burger: Pleased to Meat Limavady — brought their flame-grilled craft to the table. Pie Queen arrived with whiskey-infused pies that were as robust and no-nonsense as their name suggests. Oh Donuts delivered whiskey-glazed rings that somehow managed to be both ridiculous and revelatory. Moon Gelato turned heads with whiskey ice cream that reminded everyone why cold and spirit-sweet is such an underrated pairing. And Chocolate Manor — purveyors of some of the finest bean-to-bar work in the city — rounded things out with whiskey chocolates that lingered on the palate long after the last dram was finished.

Four drams accompanied the feast, weaving through the various courses and pairings with enough variety to keep things interesting without overwhelming. The format was deliberately relaxed — this was not a formal seated tasting with notepads and nosing glasses held aloft. It was a festival lunch, warm and sociable, the kind of afternoon that could easily stretch further if the company was good enough. TradeMarket, with its covered market character and central Belfast energy, suited the occasion perfectly: unpretentious, lively, and entirely at ease with a crowd that had come to enjoy themselves.

For those who had also joined the more structured food experiences elsewhere in the week — the Morning Star's Nose to Tail Bespoke Lunch, for instance, with its deep Ulster-kitchen gravitas — event 88 offered something complementary rather than competing: breadth over depth, celebration over ceremony. Where the Morning Star asked you to sit with one vision of food and whiskey together, Taste the Festival asked you to graze across a whole week's worth of partnerships in a single sitting. Both approaches, in their own way, got to the same place: the understanding that whiskey does not live in the glass alone.

At £40, it represented fair value for what was, in effect, a guided tour through the festival's culinary soul. If there was one event in BWW 2023 that captured the spirit of the week as a whole — generous, collaborative, deeply rooted in Belfast's identity, and entirely unafraid to have a good time — this was a very strong contender. Sláinte mhaith to everyone who pulled it together.