I will try to bring you up to date on our recent culinary treats and trips around Brussels since we have received our shipment in late September. My downfall (and upward spiral of cholesterol count) was getting our Michelin Restaurant Guide in our shipment. I was happy to find Michelin starred restaurants in our neighborhood and several other recommended ones as well.
While the weather held out (and we had nice, sunny days for some time) our Friday night routine was to walk around the corner to Rollebeeke street and have a beer outside at the Leffe Café. Leffe is a good Belgian abbey beer and they have opened their own bistros or cafes that serve food and drink. We have eaten there and the food is good but mainly we go for a beer outside with a beautiful view of the Place Sablon or Sablon Square. Their beer menu is extensive and I started at the top and worked my way down each Friday trying a new bottle of beer. I haven’t reached the bottom of the list but postponed this activity until summer weather returns. Belgium has over 400 beers and is about the size of Maryland!
In late September we went to a Michelin 1-star restaurant just around the corner from us called Trente Rue de la Paille which is also their address. Rita had their specialty starter, carpaccio of ocean salmon in lime juice and red peppers. I had a starter called Terre, Mer and Riviere, which had the same salmon along with local gray shrimp, langostines and foie gras. For our main course we both had John Dory, a white fish, on a bed of vermicelli with mashed potatoes. I had a dessert of ice cream in an eatable bowl of spun sugar with chopped apples and honey surrounded with raspberries, pineapples, strawberries, blueberries and chocolate covered kumquats. In chocolate they spelled out their name along with “For you sir” since they knew we spoke English. The food was delicious as well as nicely presented.
This is just an example of some of the restaurants we’ve gone to and I won’t bore you further on foods except once in a while. We’ve had some great meals, sampling some of the good Belgian recipes such as waterzooi (chicken stew in beer or wine sauce), moules (black mussels) and lots of fresh fish. On trips into the countryside we’ve had lots of local game in various ways since that is big on menus during the fall months. In one restaurant I had local pheasant with endive wrapped in bacon. Also, local, fresh wild mushrooms play a big role in menus this time of the year.
One weekend trip we drove just a short distance (in Belgium almost everything is a short distance) to the pretty town of Louven. Louven is a Flemish city with a pretty town square with ornate city hall (stathaus in Flemish or hotel de ville in French). St. Peter’s cathedral dominates the city just off the town square. Another nice weekend we drove a short distance north to the Flemish town of Mechelen. It too had a nice town square with St. Rombout’s Cathedral dominating the skyline. There were lots of nice back streets to walk and old churches going back to the 11th century. In most of these churches and cathedrals we found paintings by Ruebens, Van Dyke and other famous Dutch Masters. We usually had a good meal outdoors with a local beer on those nice weekends.
On the last day of September we drove to the military base in Bitburg, Germany to check out their commissary and post exchange (PX). The leaves were changing colors and coming back we drove through a pretty part of Germany called the Rheinland-Pfalz and into Luxembourg. We stopped at the pretty town of Vianden, Luxembourg for a late lunch/early dinner. I had weiner schnitzel which tasted good and was a great bargain in the deal. Vianden has an old stone bridge and castle on the hillside for atmosphere.
The first weekend in October Rita and I took the train to Paris. We had a good time getting together with old friends and going out to eat. Again, good food and wine. We walked miles around Paris and re-visited old haunts, cafes, tea salons, and restaurants. We went to our old neighborhood, visited our favorite boulangerie, and walked through the neighborhood market set up for Saturday mornings. We toured the Louvre on our last day as the rain came down hard.
The last weekend in October Rita and I took an embassy bus tour to the Black Forest of Germany. On the way we stopped for lunch in Strasbourg, France and Rita and I made it to the Maison Kammerzell restaurant, good food in an ancient half-timbered building. We next stopped at the Freilichtmuseum Vogtsbauernhof which is an outdoor museum of German farm houses and barns that were relocated to Gutach, Germany. Many of the farm houses, intertwined with the barns, were built in the 1600s. We spent the night in Hornburg and toured cuckoo clock factories/outlets but didn’t buy any. The next morning in Triberg we hiked up to the top of Germany’s highest waterfall instead of looking at more clocks. On the way home we stopped for dinner in Kayserberg, France, another pretty Alsatian town that hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years. We ate at Hassenforder (a restaurant owned by a former French bicycle racer) and while I had magret of wild duck, Rita had local charcroute – lots of pork – pork chops, thick bacon, sausages – on sauerkraut. We arrived home late that night in the middle of the first of a couple of big storms to hit England, France and Belgium.
For my birthday dinner treat we recently went to Comme Chez Soi (translated it is “like your house”), which many guide books say is the best restaurant in Belgium. It is one of the few Michelin 3-star restaurants outside of France, which is the highest award Michelin gives. I have found the Michelin guides to be reliable. The chef, Pierre Wynants, is a celebrity among chefs. I won’t go into details again only to say that Rita had his signature dish of Dover sole with Reisling mousseline sauce and I had fried scallops stuffed with spinach. The entire meal was good and the surroundings very pretty.
This last weekend we went to probably the prettiest town in Belgium and some say the best in northern Europe, Bruges. We climbed the 366 steps to the top of the huge bell tower that dominates the skyline. We took a boat cruise on the canals of Bruges and walked along the canals and back streets taking in many beautiful sights. We’ve visited Bruges before but there’s always plenty to see in this town. We plan more trips there in the future when the sun returns and the weather warms up again.
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