Based in the United Arts Club in Dublin, Bia Beatha is a unique monthly Irish supper club devoted to the rich mythology and culture surrounding Irish food. Each month guests are treated to a delicious three-course meal with wine, live music and a fascinating talk on the history of Irish food by Irish culinary historian Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire. The venture is the brainchild of Rachel Flynn and we caught up with her recently to find out more.
Tell us a little about your career so far.
I started out in my 20s working in Africa as a social researcher and then went on to become a project manager managing big healthcare projects and conflict assessments. While I was doing that, I was living in London and travelling six months a year. I’ve always loved food and I guess once you’ve learned how to manage projects you can apply those skills to anything, so even though working in the food sector is totally new for me, I feel like Bia Beatha is the sum of lots of my experience working and travelling in different parts of the world.
What was the inspiration behind Bia Beatha?
When I was working as a social researcher one of the first things we always used to do when we went into communities was to eat with them, because you learn so much about a society’s culture by seeing what their food habits are. So when I was away with my Mum in Berlin last year we found ourselves looking for somewhere to go for authentic German food, but nobody could recommend anywhere to us that wasn’t a German beer hall for tourists. We were kind of surprised, but thinking about it we realised it was probably hard to find an authentic Irish food experience in Dublin too. It was then that I started thinking about doing an event focused around celebrating Irish food.
The evening is hosted, isn’t it?
Yeah, there’s very much an emphasis on Irish hospitality and I thought it was important to include a culinary historian who could talk about the history of Irish food. With Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire it was like I’d put all the ingredients for my perfect speaker into a pot and he popped out. He’s a great storyteller and a ballad singer as well as coming from an academic background so he’s able to incorporate poetry and song and weave all these different components into the night.
Bia Beatha has been described as ‘a journey of discovery into Irish cuisine’. What’s a typical event like?
The format is very relaxed. We usually have a welcome cocktail on arrival and once people are seated Máirtín gives a quick overview of the menu, drawing out the traditional components as a way to open up into the conversation about Irish food. So the evening flows with Máirtín talking between courses and after he speaks there’s usually this split second silence followed by a rise in conversation as people talk about what he’s told them. It’s very nice, people really enjoy it and there’s also a post-dinner musical performance. By the end of every event people have made new friends and they’re hugging and exchanging contact details.
Tell us about the food.
The food is really central and I always work with the chef, Anthony O’Grady, to come up with a menu that’s a little bit unusual. We have an amazing supplier called the Wild Irish Foragers & Preservers who do cordials made from hawthorn berry and elderberry which we use with Prosecco as part of the welcome cocktail. When we did the Saint Patrick’s Festival we worked with Guinness, and with that event we used malted shortcake in the dessert and we had things like barley risotto, so it’s about using traditional Irish ingredients, but in new and contemporary ways that you mightn’t necessarily have seen before.
Was it easy to set up?
Initially, the biggest challenge was finding a space because there weren’t that many options out there. Now we’re based in a really beautiful Georgian building, the United Arts Club, which is a members club for artists that’s very central and has loads of character. Before that, I was looking for about three months and a lot of places were saying no. In Dublin there’s still some reluctance to use spaces for something other than their primary purpose. A couple of the galleries that I went to said they would have liked to do it but they could lose their arts council funding, which seemed very bureaucratic to me.
What else is in the works?
We’d love to do food events and launches where we’d incorporate the ingredients of the food product and tailor the talk around that company or product. We’re looking at doing some of the food festivals a little bit further down the line and hoping to work with Fáilte Ireland as part of their push on Irish food tourism. We’re also hoping to use other spaces as well and we’ve done an event with Kevin Powell of Gruel Guerrilla in his Temple Bar apartment for AirBnB super-hosts that was a bit edgier. I really think it would be an amazing thing to do for a Christmas party. It takes the emphasis off getting drunk and instead provides this really nice sociable cultural experience.
Have you been surprised by how well it’s taken off?
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reaction. You can tell you’ve got a good idea when people are saying, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ We did our first event at the end of October last year and it really seems to have hit a chord. I think, during the Celtic Tiger years, we were very eager to be seen as cosmopolitan and international and that kind of blew up in our faces, so now we’re seeing a return to the more traditional. Irish people often tell me as they leave at the end of the night that they have this renewed sense of pride in our mythology and culinary history. I love that.
Bia Beatha takes place at the United Arts Club 3 Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2. For details of future events see www.biabeatha.net
Words: Martina Murray
Images: Killian Broderick, Liosa McNamara
