ewx | Food in Belgium (Reply)

I can’t remember a great deal about the places we ate and kept only the scantiest of notes. But…

Brussels

Restaurant Vincent. €116 (starters, mains, coffees). Tasty fondus au fromage starter (“cheese croquette” would more accurately describe it to an English speaker), somewhat indifferent steak.
N: “Vegetable terrine very 60’s (savoury jelly always screams 60’s to me); mussels acceptable but boring (probably typical).”
Orphyse Chausette. €95.50 (mains, wine, desserts, coffee). Tasty Magret de Canard and engaging service, particularly when it came to choosing a wine.
N: “Delicious duck! Lovely service, but a bit slow.”
Le Petit Vintième (the Musée Hergé’s house restaurant). €41 (mains). Slightly fatty duck but reasonably priced considering their convenient location.
N: “Nice vegetarian thing; I forget what it actually was…”
Quartier Libre. €61 (starters, mains, wines). Unusual gag: you pick four dishes from the sixteen available and they arrive in a dish divided four ways. Would go again.
N: “Nice gimick, little choice if you don’t want meat. Wine only by the bottle.”
Et qui va ramener le chien?. €83 (looks like starters, mains, wine but I’m having trouble reading the bill l-) Very enjoyable.
N: “Excellent steak tartar, delicious gooey chocolate cake thing for desert. I think we probably did have starters. But beer, not wine.”
Le Pavillion. €33.20 (mains, desserts, beers). I honestly can’t remember anything about this place (which is probably a good sign but not an excellent one). No credit cards.
N: “Very nice courgette and cheese thing.”
Bar Bik. €57.20 (mains, desserts, beers). Tasty food though they forgot our desserts for a while(!)
N: “Flemish, and a decided preference for English over French... Very tasty vegetarian concoction. In a rather dodgy area.”
Houtsiplout. I think N must have the receipt. Enjoyed it.
N: “Lovely food; very large ducks they have in Brussels.”
La Cantina au Coeur de Bahia. Friendly staff, tasty brazillian food.
N: “sloooooow service. Tasty. Although the plantain starter was rather monotanous.”
Volle Gas. I can remember nothing about this.
N: “Boring but decent.”
Sale pepe Rosmarino. N: “Sold by the guidebook (rough guide) as the best Italian in town I really hope the rest aren’t worse. Food was oversalted, staff were curt, menu was near-illegibly hand written).”
Dolma. N: “Vegetarian all-you-can-eat-main + a dessert buffet. Service essentially non-existant (but it’s a buffet!) They had Greek salad, OMG a salad! I love salad! A nice change from the very meat-heavy trend in Belgian cuisine.”

Bruges

Den Dyver. €150 (three courses, beer, coffee). We had the quail and the codfish, both were excellent. Of the beers, Oud Bruin was easily the winner for me.
N: “DELICIOUS. And the beers was lovely, even though I hate beer! Just like Sally said. Oud Bruin was indeed nomnomnom. There was also amuse bouche and post-pudding pudding-ette trio with the bill. Very swanky; I think the best food we had all holiday.”
In Den Wittenkop. €97.50 (starters, mains, desserts, beer/wine, coffee). Friendly service, good food.
N: “Lovely food here, I went with the suggestion menu here though R didn’t; I think it was duck (again). Also there was amuse bouche.”
De Stove. €127 (three courses, wine, coffee). Very enjoyable.
N: “The food was very good, but the service somewhat slow. For the dizzying heights of the recommendations (by the rough guide and Michelin) I was rather expecting something more… exciting I guess. Coffee did come with nibbly things but they weren’t very exciting nibbly things.”

EXKi proved handy for quick and easy lunches a couple of times; this is a chain self-service place but it proved substantially cheaper than adjacent tourist traps l-)
N: “Decent sandwiches/salads delicious cake! mmmm caek!”

N adds:

“To the best of my recollection none of these places in Bruges offered any vegetarian main course, they all had fish.

“Otherwise for lunch we mostly went with “whatever was closest”; nothing sticks much in the mind. Although the place with the choice of several sorts of cheese-and-ham toastie and one cheese-only toastie seemed to be going out of its way to fail to cater to a diverse clientelle I think I mostly found vegetarian food available (if not diverse) at lunch (but not at dinner, you’d have to check carefully in advance) and vegan food essentially unobtainable. Ham very popular.”

All holiday articles:

Food in Belgium

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