Restaurants of Ghent, Brussels and Mechelen during Flanders is a Festival

This is not a food blog, but as food has, in some way, influ­enced every dan­cer, musi­cian, actor, and for that mat­ter every­one else on the planet, I though I could squeeze it in. Food had a pro­found effect on rotund Gioachino Rossini, and I’m guess­ing that Mari­in­sky baller­ina Uly­ana Lopatk­ina is less of a foodie, but even so let’s give this a whirl.

The reason? Well, besides being in Ghent for a Jessye Nor­man con­cert, part of the extens­ive Flanders Fest­ival, the excuse was to drink up some Bel­gian cul­ture, along with some Bel­gian beer. And what bet­ter way to accom­pany Bel­gian beer but with Bel­gian food. It’s good. They know how to eat well, and so do I… as in too much. But hey, diets are for home, so back in Italy I’ll avoid the aper­it­ivi for a bit.

3 days, 6 res­taur­ants, 20,000 cal­or­ies. Each res­taur­ant was good, a couple very good, so here’s a rundown.

GHENT

Het Pakhuis
Schuurken­straat 4 - tel: +32 9 2235555

This res­taur­ant is inside a con­ver­ted ware­house which was used for stor­ing iron. Iron pil­lars, a glass roof and large airy spaces give it a hot­house feel, though with Bel­gian weather it prob­ably hardly ever is actu­ally hot. The space is val­ued the most dur­ing the day when shafts of sun­light illu­min­ate the eat­ing areas, at least that’s what they say. I went dur­ing the early even­ing , (about two hours earlier than I eat in Milan, which gave me a jet-laggy feel­ing without chan­ging time zones), and the low even­ing light lit the space inter­est­ingly all the same.  The staff are charm­ing and effi­cient, the tables small, though whether the French influ­enced the Flem­ish in this eco­nom­ic­ally sens­ible but ergo­nom­ic­ally uncom­fort­able trend, or vice versa, I have no idea.

Bras­serie Pakhuis has a  Bib Gour­mand in the Mich­elin Guide 2012, mean­ing that the res­taur­ant has a good price-quality ratio.

The steak was excel­lent, accord­ing to my fel­low diners, and my squid, served on a salad bed which included tiny ani­seed flowers, was tender, tasty and light. A selec­tion of in-house sorbets was very tasty. Present­a­tion was beau­ti­ful too, though there was little time to linger and appre­ci­ate it as it was Jessye time, so off to the opera house.

Belga Queen
Graslei 10 — tel: +32 9 2800100

When writ­ing about a res­taur­ant the first thing to men­tion prob­ably isn’t the loo, but with the Belga Queens (there’s one in Brus­sels too) this is the first thing that every­one talks about. The cubicles have trans­par­ent doors. That’s right, just ima­gine Great Aunt Sarah deal­ing with her stock­ings and skirts with fel­low cus­tom­ers look­ing on. Well, of course, they don’t. There’s a bit of magic… but I won’t spoil the sur­prise. Enough to say, if you have to go, you can. Privately.

Ghent’s Belga Queen is housed inside a grain ware­house on the fam­ous and much pho­to­graphed port. It is the old­est build­ing in the area. The view over the canal from the first floor win­dow tables, is the equi­val­ent of hav­ing a front row seat at the opera house. Instead of peer­ing down at the orches­tra, we watched boats con­vey tour­ists up and down the water­way, though, as the win­dows were closed, we were saved the run­ning commentary.

A very reas­on­ably priced mid­day fixed menu was deli­cious. With €19 we got through a restyled mini­ature cap­rese served on a slate plate, fol­lowed by slices of oven-cooked sal­mon with mini designer-vegetables. The whole concept of this res­taur­ant, from the stun­ning interior to what’s on your plate, is of design. The Belga Queen’s Por­tugese founder, Ant­oine Pinto, is also an interior archi­tec­tural designer, though, from what we tasted, the beauty here is def­in­itely more than skin deep.

Café Theatre
Schouw­burgstraat 5 — tel: +32 9 2650550

The Café Theatre is a more tra­di­tional space than the pre­vi­ous two Ghent res­taur­ants. It is in the opera house com­plex, and indeed Jessye Nor­man munched here after her recital.

Although Ghent proudly calls itself the Veg­gie Cap­ital of Europe, Bel­gium is fam­ous for its meat, so it was time for me to try a steak, which was excel­lent. The little veget­able pack­age tied up with bacon was cute, and the hand-cut chips served in a ver­tical tube of paper were tasty if not very crisp. A good house red accom­pan­ied our meal; the wine list is extens­ive, but pricey.

We all ate vari­ations of the same dish with dif­fer­ent sauces; I tried all three and they were yummy. No afters as a very nice Flanders Tour­ism chap called Maarten arrived to accom­pany us to an even­ing of tango dan­cing “with acro­bat­ics and pro­jec­tions”. All I’ll say is that the music was good…

BRUSSELS

Resto­bières
Rue des renards 9 — tel: +32 2 5115583

This is the res­taur­ant that gets my 5-star rat­ing. A small unpre­ten­tious place, with lots of tra­di­tional dishes and very reas­on­able prices for what we ate. Their web­site gives an idea of the spirit of the place. Alain Fayt, the owner, has writ­ten a book con­tain­ing many of his recipes, so no secret ingredi­ents here. It is in in the Mar­olles dis­trict which I love: medi­eval street lay­outs, little shop-fronts painted all col­ours, with spe­cial­ist sellers of antiques, vin­tage clothes, com­ics and books. There’s a great atmo­sphere, and its the per­fect situ­ation for a res­taur­ant like Restobières.

So what bet­ter place to try the local dishes. First up, kip-kap, which is a type of meat loaf made from pig cheeks sus­pen­ded in gelatin. The real­ity is bet­ter than the descrip­tion, though I pre­ferred their home-made pâté with Rochefort.

The Bloempanch, rather like the black saus­age from Scot­land, black because of the pig’s blood, really is very good. A big slice, the size of a sau­cer, melts in the mouth, and is deli­cious. My less-adventurous com­pan­ion ordered the farm chicken leg Water­zooï, which was a cream, egg and veget­able soup with pieces of chicken and a large chicken thigh stick­ing out of the bowl like a ladle. He pro­nounced it exquis­ite and is threat­en­ing to copy the recipe when back in Italy.

To accom­pany the meal I chose, or rather Fayt chose, a beer from their enorm­ous selec­tion. It was called Noir de Dot­tig­nies and it was, of course, black, and very, very good.

There wasn’t much room after that, so we ordered a home-made car­a­mel ice-cream with two spoons. Won­der­ful, and sufficient.

Bras­serie du Jaloa
Place Sainte-Catherine 5–7 — tel: +32 2 5121831

That even­ing we were in another fam­ous Brus­sels’ estab­lish­ment . The Bras­serie du Jaloa is the sis­ter res­taur­ant to the Jaloa Gast­ro­nomique where Mich­elin starred chef Gaétan Colin runs the kit­chen. We amused to find an Italian wait­ress who’d grown up under the sun of the south. Appar­ently she loves the rain and, as she wisely put it, hot days are fine when you’re on hol­i­day, but not when you have to work.

As fish is one of their strong points we each ordered the €68 Plat­eau Maison for two — the least expens­ive of the fish combo plates which go up to €110 — with oysters and clams, whelks, prawns and Span­ish mus­sels. All was extremely fresh (thank god) and quite enough. We had the usual fun bat­tling with our pins and pli­ers until we’d fin­ished them all off, and just had just space enough to sluice down a couple of vodkas.

MECHELEN

Grand Café Lamot
Van Beeth­oven­straat 8/10 — tel: +32 15 209530

Dreary day in Mechelen, a rather charm­ing small city, just out­side Brus­sels, so good to find the warmth of the Grand Café Lamot which is part of a cul­tural centre on the site of a dis­used brew­ery. The res­taur­ant is very mod­estly decked out, but its strik­ing fea­ture is two massive glass walls which even gave the impres­sion of it being quite a bright day.

We both star­ted with the home-made shrimp cro­quettes, nice but noth­ing spe­cial, though appar­ently are typ­ical of the region. As I was want­ing to eat light, I fol­lowed these with fried baby soles with French fries, essen­tially Fish ‘n’ Chips, and they tasted exactly as expec­ted. How­ever my com­pan­ion was much cleverer and chose the sir­loin with a pepper-cream sauce and pro­nounced it the best he’d had in Belgium.

The high­light of my meal was the beer: medium-bodied with a hazy golden col­our. It’s called Gouden Car­olus Tripel and comes from Michelen itself, and is wonderful.

We took our time owing to the rain out­side, and with no con­cert to rush off to, and fin­ished our lunch with a glass of  Jenever (or Gen­ièvre for the French speak­ers, and Genever for the Dutch) which is a juniper-flavoured and strongly alco­holic tra­di­tional liquor. From our table we could see the boat trip­pers shiv­er­ing, and swans who were so macho and proud that they glided majestic­ally through the rain as though it was the most beau­ti­ful day of the year. Per­haps it was.

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