ewx | Food in Belgium

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.”

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