Restaurants in Brussels
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Kokob
Meals at this airy Ethiopian bar/restaurant/cultural centre are based around small, shared dishes, like spiced eggplant or finely ground spinach and cheese, spooned onto a central injera (pancake), with more pancakes provided for you to rip apart and use to scoop up your meal. If you order a pot of Ethiopian coffee (€8), be prepared to wait 15 minutes while the beans are roasted, and to be wired all night.
reviewed
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Comocomo
At this much buzzed-about spot, pintxos (Basque tapas) such as octopus or bite-sized ham sandwiches, glide past on an 80m-long sushi-train-style conveyor belt, and are colour-coded for easy identification (purple for pork, blue for fish and so on). But most diners’ eyes remain fixed on the passing fashion parade outside the big picture-windows.
reviewed
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Belga Queen
The Belga Queen is Brussels' queen of indulgence. Generous opening hours, a fabulous restaurant with an equally fab crowd, a lustrous ecailler (oyster bar) and a cigar bar leave you no excuses for not visiting. The main menu (split between meat and fish) even has a vegetarian section and low-calorie options for visiting supermodels.
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Au Stekerlapatte
The grungy façade hides a cavernous bistro where the approach is casual, the menu extensive and the portions large. Meat, fish and fowl - cooked in traditional Belgian ways - are the staples. Well hidden but definitely known.
reviewed
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La Quincaillerie
The gleaming brass interior gives a clue to this brasserie's former life as an ironmonger's shop. It woos with seafood specialities.
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René
Deep in the heart of Anderlecht, overlooking a tree-lined square and the local gemeentehuis (town hall), is Brussels' most authentic family friterie-restaurant. It's the Dirk and Dorine Piolon show. Dad, Mum, offspring and in-laws, frying and refrying the frites, preparing a succulent filet américain and dishing up steaming cauldrons of mussels and other Belgian specialities to an appreciative local audience.
Turn up here at lunchtime on Saturday, as the market vendors on the facing square pack up their wares, and you'll find it's full house - only the rickety green metal tables decorating the footpath are unoccupied. For that quintessential Belgian experience, and not a…
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Taverne du Passage
Consistently keen service and faithful Belgian meals are the pivotal points of this Brussels institution. Located in the sublime Galeries St Hubert, it has been around since 1928 and stepping through the draped doorway is like zapping away a century. An all-male middle-aged crew strut their stuff in slightly crumpled penguin uniforms, serving ample portions of Belgian classics such as moules-frites (mussels and chips) and waterzooi (cream-based chicken or fish stew).
With some daring, this could be the place to try filet américain (raw minced beef). No matter how busy it gets, the blokes are unfailingly friendly. In summer, tables line up in the gallery outside, and kid…
reviewed
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Gin Fish
In the absence of printed menus, diners congregate around the bar facing the open kitchen to watch chef Didier Garnich create gastronomical feasts from the day’s freshest market ingredients. Garnich famously relinquished his formerly Michelin-starred establishment De Matelote, and Gin Fish now has its own newly minted star. You’ll need to book at least two weeks ahead on the weekend, but if you’re lucky you might be able to snag a midweek seat the same morning.
reviewed
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Am Sweet
Spiralling over two floors and several rooms, this charming salon de thé/confiserie on a village-like street resembles a Parisian apartment, with small metal tables, chairs in striped calico slip-covers, shelves of well-thumbed books, and framed watercolours resting against the walls. Not only is it a delightful spot for brunch or a fragrant tea, but the ground floor stocks an enticing array of sweets, including Laurent Gerbaud chocolates.
reviewed
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Metin
One of many little Turkish restaurants strung along Chaussée de Haecht, this is a good spot for a bite after visiting nearby Maison Autrique. They started in the mid '70s, about 15 years after the first Turkish immigrants moved in, and continue to draw plenty of local diners. Start with an iskembe corba (tripe soup), followed by a boat-shaped pide (Turkish pizza), and wash it down with a glass of ayran (buttermilk).
reviewed
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Den Dyver
Not only are the seasonal dishes at this elegant restaurant individually paired with beers, they’re also cooked in Belgium’s favourite nectar. One delicious example is the hare, turnip and cranberry ravioli cooked in Oude Gueuze, which is served with a Petrus Winterbier. Three-, four- and five-course menus can be ordered with a beer accompanying each course. There’s also the option of pairing with wines, but that would be missing the point.
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Viva M’Boma
A white-tiled former triperie (offal butchers shop) now houses this fab restaurant. Viva M’Boma’s name means ‘long live the grandmother’ in the old Bruxellois dialect, and the updated dishes here would make both Grandma and the departed butchers proud. Mains like veal kidneys, liver-based casseroles or horse steak are accompanied by hand-cut fries or stoemp (mashed potato), with speculaas ice cream for dessert.
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Dansing Chocola
Things get loose at this old-fashioned café, with staff grooving behind the bar or vaulting Tarzan-like up to the wrought-iron mezzanine railing to take orders, while busking violinists serenade diners. Dishes – Belgian and a few international options like spicy Thai soup – are simple and incredibly filling (go for ‘small’ portions unless you’re ravenous), and there are sensational fries (€3 a bowlful). The kitchen closes at 10pm.
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Sea Grill
You’d be hard pressed to find a more unlikely setting for Brussels’ finest seafood than deep inside this ‘80s ode to interior atrium elevators and muzak. But at the Michelin-starred Sea Grill restaurant, chef Yves Mattagne and his team create just that in the open kitchen. Try the Brittany lobster, crushed and extracted in an antique solid-silver lobster press (one of only four in the world) and prepared at your table.
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Etablissement Max
This elegant, pale-pistachio-and-gold brasserie serving refined fare is run by Yves Van Maldeghem whose entrepreneurial family started out with a grand mobile fair stall. Yves bakes waffles using his family’s 120-year-old waffle irons, and also makes pancakes and sizzling apple fritters. To bake your own, pick up Jan Gheysens’ Belgian Waffles and Other Treats (2006) here, which contains Yves’ family recipes.
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Het Groot Vleeshuis
Only products from the surrounding province are sold at this medieval butchers’ hall, which has been converted into a shop selling artisan products (with free counter tastings of cheeses and meats). That means you won’t find Coke on the menu in the attached glassed-in restaurant overlooking the old covered market’s ceilings strung with hams, but you will find local brews, apple wine and, naturally, meat galore.
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La Maison du Cygne
Try for a table overlooking the Grand Place in this refined 2nd-floor restaurant where you can dine on bank-breaking, but beautifully prepared Belgian classics. Service is appropriately fussy and the wine list outstanding. Budget diners after a taste of Louis XIV grandeur should try the 1st-floor Ommengang bar (noon to 2pm Monday to Friday), where lunch menus cost €18, including a half-bottle of water.
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Lola
Lola...yes, it’s hard to get the Kinks out of your head at this streamlined contemporary brasserie. The menu is a combination of seasonal French and Italian (rack of lamb with thyme and onion confit and dauphinois potatoes, say), but it’s the effervescent conversations of the young clientele bouncing off the stripped-back stone and wood surfaces that really gives this place its buzz.
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Comme Chez Soi
The name evokes cooking just like ‘at home’, but unless you have a personal chef crafting the likes of North Sea lobster salad with black truffles and potatoes, sole fillets with Riesling and shrimp mousseline or perhaps spicy lacquered pigeon breast with wild rice, it’s nothing of the sort. The prices are gobsmacking, but so is the food from master chef Pierre Wynants’s son-in-law, Lionel Rigolet.
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Bar Choc
Hidden away in the Zilverpand shopping courtyard, this streamlined, contemporary café is chocoholic heaven, serving chocolate fondue, chocolate pancakes, rabbit in beer-and-chocolate sauce, as well as 44 different kinds of hot and cold chocolate drinks (made from real chocolate, of course). The ginger hot choc – with bobbing pieces of handmade gingerbread – is wonderfully warming in winter.
reviewed
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Pré Salé
Local diner on a shabby backstreet that's become an institution with the locals. Looks a bit like a butcher's shop when you first enter - all white tiles, bright lights and big plates of spare ribs - but it's very infectious, particularly on Friday nights when you'll need to book a few weeks in advance to partake in the soirée spectacle, a vaudeville-style dinner show.
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De Karmeliet
Chef Geert Van Hecke’s intricate compositions such as Zeeland oysters, poached quail eggs, caviar and potato mousseline have earned him a trio of Michelin stars. The setting is slightly austere, but gourmands will be too busy swooning to notice. Lunch menus are a good deal, and Van Hecke is also in the process of opening a cheaper bistro. Book well ahead, especially for weekends.
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Grand Café Horta
Encased in glass with views from the basement bar up to street level, this café-restaurant has outsized iron girders – relics salvaged from Victor Horta’s much-mourned Art Nouveau masterpiece, Maison du Peuple. Stop for a drink, snack or a full meal, with Mediterranean-inspired choices like asparagus risotto or ravioli with polenta, or that brasserie classic: steak-and-chips.
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Le Pain Quotidien/Het Dagelijks Brood
Now a successful multinational chain, this is the original flagship of baker Alain Coumont, who launched his cafés here in 1990. Like its offspring, it revolves around a central wooden communal table, where local fashion designers, media types and post-clubbers rub shoulders over freshly baked bread and pastries, pies, salads and sandwiches, as well as sinful chocolate cakes.
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House of Eliott
Flamboyantly camp turn-of-the-20th-century décor here includes period-dressed mannequins and candelabras in the street-level parlour/dining room, and old coffee grinders, sewing machines and Wedgwood-tiled walls in the basement ‘servants’ quarters’. The latter opens to a terrace jutting right over the canal, and features a tank full of live lobsters, the house speciality.
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