Wiedmaier, known in the District for restaurants such as Marcel’s, Brabo and Brasserie Beck, was recently “enthroned” as an Honorary Knight by the Knighthood of the Brewers’ Mash Staff during Belgian Beer Weekend in Brussels.
What was the knighting ceremony like?
The Brewers’ Mash Staff has been around since the 1600s, I believe, as a guild. You go to a church, you go to a town hall, the mayor of Brussels is there, the U.S. ambassador was there, the Japanese ambassador was there, and a couple of local Belgian celebrities were there. There were probably around 300 people. They bring you up there, talk about you and why you’ve been invited, and basically say how you’re an ambassador of Belgian brews. Then they take the old brewers’ stirring stick and swear you in.
Why were you invited to be knighted?
My father’s Belgian, and my mother’s from California. I went to culinary school in the Netherlands and had worked in Brussels, where you always drank Belgian beer — it was the thing to drink. When I opened Marcel’s, that was 14 years ago, I think I was the first person in D.C. to carry Stella Artois. We had it on tap there.
Were Belgian beers always popular in the District?
In the beginning, it was really hard to get it over here. There weren’t a lot of importers. Then there started to be more demand for it, and now I don’t think you can go into a bar without a Belgian beer being on the list. And now they own Budweiser.
What’s the Belgian beer scene like in D.C. now?
There’s a lot of little places that popped up. Since we opened up Brasserie Beck, there’s been close to a dozen other places that opened up that do the mussels and beer. There’s a huge beer cult here, and I don’t think we realized that until we opened up Brasserie Beck.
– Ben Giles
