Pierre Marcolini

Entering this temperature-controlled mausoleum of chocolate you could be pushing open the heavy doors of a Louis Vuitton flagship store, to be met by staff in their livery and a feature chandelier.  It is intimidating.  Well, it would be if it weren't so full of people like you and me, shuffling around in trains, no poodles or fur coats in sight; everyone is just trying to keep out of each other's way.

Imagine, if you will, a shop that is trying to conserve a certain hauteur, an image of its own exclusivity.  Delvaux-designed presentation boxes, chocolates and desserts arranged behind glass like jewels, assistants in white gloves fingering delicate creations, but tourists steaming up the glass and irritating girls with their cameras keep ruining it for them.  Sigh.  But the staff cope with all this admirably well.  The tills keep ringing, and there are larger, cheaper selections upstairs too.  My guess is they could teach Louis Vuitton a thing or two.

So imagine my amusement when a power cut sends staff scuttling around, and customers are suddenly deliberating shades of dark chocolate - in the dark.  After a brief interlude a switch is tripped and the lights and chiller cabinets are working again.  But the spell of perfection has been broken.  The staff re-arrange their customary smiles (it's too busy to do otherwise): it's OK, the chocolates only lost their lifeline of cool air for a few minutes, all will be well.  But then, it happens again!  The humming stops and anxiety once again plays across faces.

I've just visited around five chocolate shops in one day (for research purposes), and as all this is going on I remember the advised temperature range for storing chocolates - between 15 and 18 degrees - so says the brochure for Mary Chocolatier.  Now this is a really unhelpful temperature range, I think: too cool for room temperature and too warm for a fridge....

In truth it's too crowded here to really feel comfortable, whatever the temperature.  I want to ask more about Pierre and his chocolates, but I'm put off by the card thrust into my hand: I don't want to call someone in VIP relations.....  All I'd get is some pre-packaged saccharine tale, and it won't be the man himself!  I'm beginning to feel that Pierre is just too swish to be my preferred chocolatier...

Upstairs there is plenty of choice - from the 54 EUR mummified truffle teddy bears grinning inanely (I wouldn't like to be shut in here with them at night!) to sleek black selection boxes (around 25 EUR), marzipan fruits, and 7 EUR tablets for those who can't decide what to buy.  A discovery or voyage (découverte or voyage) box would seem a very good place to start.

I say it is hard to find presentation as good as this.  And the chocolates are delicate and refined and delicious.  They taste expensive and they are!  You should definitely stop by, but don't end your chocolate explorations here.  There are plenty more chocolatey offerings to sample once you leave this rather chilly mausoleum behind.  And only you can decide who is worthy of your crown of Best Chocolatier in Brussels!

You can also watch this space to find out mine.

Oase

Much as I like Brussels, it is reassuring to know that thanks to the boyfriend I have access to a car, and can escape the city on a whim.

The last few weeks I haven't been doing much escaping, but dashing around with a glazed expression, dishevelled hair and yellow fingers deprived of circulation.  I really should invest in some peruvian rainbow gloves from the Christmas market, or find the ones from last year.  I also went to the glamorous work Christmas party under chandeliers, but the evening somehow ended in an alley off the Sablon, in a seedy karoake bar where, squished amongst colleagues, stained walls and various dodgy-looking regulars, I tried to summon up the courage to sing.  Incidentally I didn't think the adjective "seedy" could be applied to the Sablon.  I was wrong.  By this point cheap white wine was a-pounding in my skull, so I left somewhat prematurely and without singing a note, neatly sidestepping a pool of vomit outside the front door and averting the creepy, leering smile of Le Patron.

Another night I tried an alternative bar, which is probably a good thing.  An oasis in Leuven.  Actually this is just a small bar (I think the word is "intimate"), but rather less creepy than the karaoke bar, which shall remain nameless.  For now.  This Leuven bar, Oase, has space for acoustic performer(s), the odd regular, and a bar that probably doesn't get wiped clean very often.

But wait, Oase, what an extraordinary CD collection you have!  And the girl behind the bar, is that a piercing, on her cheek?!  My eyes flit from girl to shelf, where the various components of a hi-fi system and record player command my attention even more than the Triple Carmeliet on tap.  Records and CDs are even encroaching on the small shelf space devoted to spirits.....  This, you sense, is a music enthusiast's home from home.  Unusually, for Belgium, beer takes second place.

We listen to Paolo Conte, Bob Dylan, and someone else with a deep, gravelly voice.  There are doodles on the back of coasters, stuck to the wall; drinkers both young and old, and plenty of beards....  The barman, dressed in black, looks drunk or stoned, or both.  There are deep voices, wooden stools, wooden floor, a wooden bar, and the distinctive smell of B.O.

Oase is one of a crowd of bars on this Leuven square, but more interesting musically than most.  B.O or no B.O, I'll certainly be back for another Triple Carmeliet.

La Lunette

So many bars, so many beers, so little time.  So what do you do as a bar owner in Brussels to try and attract new customers?  Well, you know that in Belgium every beer should be served in its own special glass.  And if you didn't know, then you soon will: witness the bartender apologising when he doesn't have the appropriate receptacle for your hallowed beer of dark, creamy loveliness.  Just don't venture that it doesn't matter what glass it is in: it does matter, more than you can imagine!  


If you're the owners of La Lunette, you decide that the best way to get the tourists in is to serve their beer of choice in a really, really huge glass.  And this time for me it was Leffe Brune, the beer of fancy.   How big is big?  Well, one litre allegedly.  But appearances can be deceptive, and the glass size seems to fluctuate before my eyes as I make my slow progress.  I would like to subject the glass to further scientific analysis, as my rational self is expecting a gimmick here.  Can it really be cheaper to buy a 12 euro Lunette than, err, several glasses of normal Leffe?  Possibly not, but this is a tradition dating from 1953 and I suppose they think a large glass is more exciting.

Anyway I proceed methodically, and take my time. The beer is drunk slowly, my brain is working sluggishly and I look into the beer's murky depths for inspiration as I talk.  It doesn't come.



Reading your fortune in a lunette beer glass

I've done it once; I don't think I'll do it again.  The bar is a bit bland and I disapprove of the stern notice warning consumers that broken Lunettes must be replaced at great cost.  So easily broken..... Don't let me stop you trying one (they're 24 euros for 2, depending on which beer you have).  But better still, track down a normal-sized kwak glass which will catch out the unsuspecting drinker!  And there are plenty of other curious-shaped glasses to try.


What is a lunette?