This Festival In Dublin Brought Together Guinness And Celeb Chefs And We Wish We Were There

GUINNESS X MEATOPIA, hosted at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Dublin, featured celebrity chefs who proved that Guinness makes the most flavorful beers to pair with every mouthwatering meat you grill.

For the third straight year, Guinness-lovers (and foodies!) from around the world gathered in Dublin for GUINNESS X MEATOPIA — a weekend-long celebration of beer, food, fire, and music — from July 5 to 7.

The Meatopia event at Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Dublin included talks with some of the world’s most interesting food and drink speakers and a curated lineup of live music acts.

And the highlight of the festival? All-star chefs came together to create signature grilled dishes, made with local, seasonal ingredients and Guinness.

Meatopia hosted chefs from as far away as the US and Singapore, alongside local Dublin-based chefs.

Chef Kwame Onwuachi, the winner of the 2019 James Beard Foundation “Rising Star Chef of the Year” Award, prepared three amazing dishes over the course of the event using Guinness as an ingredient.

The highlight: Chef Kwame’s Short Rib Suya with Calabrian Chili Honey that was braised, smoked, and grilled while being basted with Guinness Draught at each step.

Why does Chef Kwame love cooking with Guinness? Big flavors need big beers!

“I think it’s so easy to pair a dish with it if you cook with flavor. My cuisine is very straightforward, but it has a lot of flavor built into it — there are layers and layers and layers, which accentuate the Guinness flavors, which also has layers and layers and layers," he said. "There’s malty notes, there’s smoky notes, it’s a full-bodied beer."

When asked if it's unusual to pair an Irish beer with the Afro-Caribbean cuisine for which Kwame is known, he said, "Hell no, because the second biggest [market for] Guinness is Nigeria. So we drink Guinness with our food all the time. It makes sense.”

He explained that the dark flavors in Guinness go really well with Caribbean and African food because so much of it is stewed for a long time. "Living in Nigeria…it was inspiring for me. It reminds me of my culture. It goes back to my roots."

Kwame hoped people learned how easy pairing can be thanks to the bold flavor of Guinness. "I want people to take away that … it's extremely easy to pair Guinness with food. The dishes that I did were fairly simple, but the Guinness went really well with them," he said.

"That bold flavor [of Guinness] goes hand in hand with a lot of the cuisine that I cook," Kwame said.

The ultimate takeaway? Guinness makes the most flavorful brews to pair with what's hot off the grill.

To try a similar short rib recipe at home, check out this recipe on the Guinness website.

Please Drink Responsibly.

Images via Andres Poveda / Guinness

GUINNESS Draught Stout and GUINNESS Extra Stout. Imported by Diageo Beer Company USA., Norwalk, CT.