After a six-year, £73million investment, Guinness this week opened its Open Gate Brewery visitor experience in Covent Garden, complete with three eating spots from two high-profile chefs.
The most glamorous option is Gilroy’s Loft on the fifth floor, where a menu of oysters and seafood is served by a team headed by chef Pip Lacey. It takes its name from John Gilroy, the London-based artist who created the famous animal-based Guinness ads from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Pip, formerly of her own Hicce and a head chef at Murano, also leads the kitchen in the Porter’s Table, a ground-floor grill restaurant where Guinness crops up regularly as an ingredient in dishes ranging from the house soda bread to celeriac with Guinness dashi lion’s mane, and from a Guinness and green pepper sauce served with grilled mains to a triple potato, Guinness and mushroom side dish; there is also, of course, a Guinness cake for dessert.
In the more informal courtyard, drop-ins can sample a range of new pies from pastry maestro Calum Franklin, most recently of Harrods. Highlights include a slow-cooked beef and Guinness pie or the option of a “flight” of pies for the undecided.
The Guinness served here is not brewed on-site – it must be imported from Dublin for authenticity’s sake. The Covent Garden micro-brewery led by master brewer Hollie Stephenson produces a London porter, a lager, an IPA, a pale ale and other brews including an apricot sour. There are also two shops where visitors can stock up on beers to take home as well as branded merch.
With Ireland’s most famous porter currently going through one of its fashionable phases, Barry O’Sullivan, managing director of Diageo Great Britain (as the company is now called), says: “London has played a critical role in Guinness’ success throughout its history, and two centuries after the black stuff arrived in the UK capital, one in seven pints poured in the city is now a Guinness.”
The Covent Garden venue is Guinness’s fourth Open Gate Brewery in the world, after Dublin, Baltimore and Chicago.