Friterie Tabora

Back with my parents for a few days, I catch my Dad with bemused eyes taking in my waistline.  He asks, all innocent-like, if I have been doing much café reviewing lately.

Yes, I say, mortified that the beer drinking has so quickly and obviously made its way to my belly.  I resolve to start running again, properly.  I pantingly manage five laps and twenty minutes of the local park, but I am a long way from my 20km fitness of last year. 

And then there are the frites.  The latest offerings here are from Friterie Tabora, which promises non frozen specimens, although the meat stacks under the counter appear barely defrosted.  The housemates and I are hungry.  Very hungry.  We're about to try Scottish dancing, some of us for the first time.

Monstrous!  These were NOT mine

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you this wonderful carb-tastic Belgian creation: the mitraillette (sub-machine gun)!   Fried burger (or some form of meat-like substance), a dollop of mayonnaise, some additional sauce like andalouse, cocktail or pickels, and a generous two handfuls of chips, encased in a hefty, doughy, white demi-baguette.  Crikey.  I can just imagine it sitting in my stomach like a log.

It's too much for the first of my housemates.  We enjoy the standing in the queue talking to the friendly chip man, and advising giggly American girls on saucy options.  I choose my usual cornet of frites with the distinctly unsaucy, non-piquant Provençale, but in extra large this time.   

It's rather hard to judge your frites, unless you're willing to sample several cornets of an evening.  And my waistline might suggest otherwise, but I don't eat chips very often, and fear mitraillettes would provoke chronic indigestion: a kind of  punch-up between stomach acid, potato and beef fat, with some egg and spice to make it twice as nice.  I like these chips, but perhaps chips vary a bit like the weather: you get a good batch; you get a bad batch.  People move on, and so the reputations of different frietkots move with the people who run them.  They're a lovely golden colour and deliciously tasty.  They are better than Maison Antoine (where last time I was stung by their mediocrity, for a place so famed!)  Those at FritFlagey are more misshapen and not so uniform in colour, which is a good thing.   I think they still win out over Tabora and Fritland, but it is difficult to say.  And probably it doesn't matter.  Tabora's are really pretty good.

"So what do you think of these chips then?"  I ask, to nobody in particular.  With eyes glazed, and cheeks rosy, my friends are chewing away at their mitraillette determinedly and placidly.  Nobody says a word. 

rue de Tabora 2
(staggering distance from Bourse, the Grand Place - and Fritland - and always there for the really, really hungry)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitraillette

Café Merlo

"If you don't like it, I'll drink it.  I'm also thirsty!"  Says the barman at Café Merlo.  We've just scuttled in, like beetles shrouded in winter coats, after several minutes of purposeful walking, heads down, through the May drizzle.  Once inside and warm my glasses steam up and I don't know what to have to drink, as usual.  On the list there are very few beers I don't know the name of; I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.  Mainly just to please our affable barman, I pretend I've never had Rodenbach before.  I have, but think I disliked it, and I hope to be proven wrong.  My friend has the "Brussels calling", with its tagline "bitter is better."  The barman's advice: whenever you see the name Brasserie de la Senne, try one of their beers because they are always good.   Good, and they're from Brussels.

Sadly for the Rodenbach, it is not a beer I appreciate or will pick ever again.  But I don't think I can hand it back.  Instead I am left wondering how a beer can taste so much like Worcestershire sauce: kind of vinegary, like it should be a flavour enhancer added to an under-performing bolognese.  

Our host is happy to talk, in-between serving everyone at the rectangular bar that encloses him.  Stools and seats are in short supply: I'd have to come earlier on a Friday to be sure of a seat, even though there are some more spaces - and another bar - upstairs. Up there it feels like a private room.

How to sum up Café Merlo?  Perched on my stool I watch Duvel being expertly poured and strain to read the "Loi de l'ivresse" perched in its frame above postcards, spirits and a bottle of Laphroaig.   Flemish is predominant here, but French, English, Italian or Spanish will probably do as well.  This time the crowd cannot be idly typecast from atop my bar stool. 

We decide this is a bar for lazing on a summer terrace.  Outside this is the non-business end of Place Sainte-Catherine.  Inside we could sit in the window nook, with the Scrabble.  Yes, the board games have been duly noted for next time. 


Café Merlo
Baksteenkaai 80
Brussels
1000 Brussels

Au Daringman

Mid-way down the rue de Flandre there is a tiny bar in the corner, Au Daringman.    It has red neon strip lighting and a darkly wooden interior with an old Stella hoarding.  The bar at the back has a mirrored backdrop and a huge vase of white roses.  With its red-brown wood panelling, old benches and flowers it reminds me of L'Archiduc.  I like it here.

When I arrive my friend is already shivering in front of Café Monk.  Tonight Café Monk is heaving.  I like it in there too but tonight it looks overrun, forcing raucous patrons to speak loudly to be heard over the din.  Not the best place for a first date, as I know from experience.  I prefer the smaller bruin café just a couple of minutes away.

My objective for the evening had been to try some new beers, and on the list there are several that are unfamiliar.  My housemate told me they speak Flemish here.  The pretty bar girl, with her bat-wing eyeliner and tiny waist, definitely prefers Flemish or English.  I can only order two hot chocolates in Flemish, and the first time I tried that I received two cappuccinos instead.  English it is then.  I order a new beer, and it's really good, but later on leaving we realise we've both forgotten its name!  Next time I will note it down, because I've yet to notice this beer anywhere else. 

Everyone squishes up at little tables: regulars and new faces.  The place has a lefty Bohemian air: a copy of Libération is casually discarded on a table beside me, and there are a mix of young students with dreadlocks and untidy hair, and slightly older groups who are more mysterious and resist attempts at stereotyping, but I suspect they like jazz.  My hair is also not at its best, but I like the fact that nobody pays you any attention, certainly no more than you deserve, and nor are you made to feel unwanted either.  We listen to 60s classics and more Miles Davis.  Later, we shift up on our bench to make space for a lady with a sharp dark bob and strong jaw, above eyeliner, leather jacket, and patterned tights in clumpy boots.  I notice her hands are masculine; she sits dreamily and writes in her book.

When we leave Au Daringman the cobbles are greasy with rain, and it's disappointingly, unseasonably, unsociably cold.  A few minutes later, we are relieved to arrive at our next bar........



rue de Flandre 37
Brussels
+32 (0)2 512 43 23
Au Daringman is also open lunchtimes Tuesday to Friday.  I've heard that sometimes there are concerts upstairs in the evenings.

Madagasikara

Madagasikara is a resturant squeezed down the end of the rue de Flandre.  On the way there we pass some amusingly-named little side streets and yet more enticing bars.  Now here's another area of town I need to research: the list of beers and bars papering one of the walls in my kitchen is growing, teasing me.  I need help.  I'm fed up with being rained on, too.  And of days withering at a desk, while something is busy dying inside me.  On the plant on my desk there is a single green shoot.  Grow little shoot, grow! 

I'm not the only one floundering at the moment: my housemates and I decide none of us feel like cooking.  Usually we all cook for ourselves rather than work together on some big communal meal.  The oven is temperamental and when finally you manage to light the gas at the bottom, you jump back startled, your fingers smelling of singed pork and missing a few strands of downy hair.  One housemate always cooks plentifully and the leftovers stake out the fridge for quite a while until one of us succumbs to this particular endurance contest; the other shares my boundless love for mashed potato and makes a delicious OREO cake (I hope she's reading this, we haven't had one for a while).  And me, well I like baking, and I cook a lot of mince.  When the supermarket runs out I even cook Américain mince, but don't tell any Belgians I said that.

"Don't worry", says the lady in Madagasikara, after I've made my meal choice.  "Don't let it put you off.  Your fish dish is cooked with these special leaves.  They produce a special effect in your mouth.  It's not unpleasant; just kind of.... ticklish.  It's OK", she continues, as a flicker of pained worry crosses my face, to be replaced by the beginnings of a sly grin.  I can hardly not try ticklish leaves now, can I?  My housemates opt for the safer options of chicken curry and gambas, but I take the meal complete with its own disclaimer.

 I can hardly complain, it's my own fault.  We all have some cold pickled vegetables on our plate, which we like.  My friends are busy enjoying their mild coconut curry and rum-soaked gambas.  But at the first mouthful of the lime and leaf infused fish stew my tongue recoils in horror.  The dish is overpowering, smoky brininess seeping into every morsel.  The lime doesn't stand a chance.  Then I place the fish in my mouth and more troublingly, I realise I have several bones in there somewhere, my cheeks contorting as I try to locate them.  For a moment everything comes into perspective - tedious days in the office, contrary weather, absent friends and unexplained bad temper - and I hope that my housemates remember the Heimlich maneouvre.  I've never choked on food and didn't expect to have to pick through sauce and a little clutch of bones.  I'd rather hoped that the restaurant would do that for me.  Still I was warned, and the cook and his wife are genuine and friendly.  I just ordered the wrong thing.

The others like their food, but nobody is overflowing with praise.  It's possibly because the food is slightly overpriced for the not over-generous quantity you get: we pay 75 euros for a main course and three soft drinks.  You can have tajines and tapas for less.  I'm also a little disappointed by my non- alcoholic cocktail, which promises much with its list of ingredients, but turns out to taste a little like normal juice, and is gone in 6 mouthfuls...

Particularly when the team behind a restaurant hasn't done anything to deserve my ire, I don't like to criticise.  The decor, music and company has all been carefully considered to give me an enjoyable evening.  I like the blackboard map of the island as you come in, the husband and wife team are smiling, and I've had my first experience of a country I have never visited, eating something authentic and different.  I've spent the 1 May holiday in the sun, walking in the fresh air in a place near Brussels which not many people seemed aware of: they were at the Laeken greenhouses instead.  So maybe it was just the fish. My friends liked their food.  You know I'm not fond of salty food, and this tastes like Lapsang Souschong.  I'm Becinbrussels, I'm a wanderer.  And the most important thing I learnt at university: to keep exploring, keep learning, there is no right answer.  Hey readers, you don't have to listen to me.

Madagasikara

10 rue de Flandre

1000 Brussels

Tel: 04 73 44 40 74

info@madagikara.be

Closed Sunday lunch and Wednesday