Le Dolma

40 years is a long time.  But that is how long Le Dolma veggie restaurant and adjoining organic shop have been open.   And 38 years here, in this location at the tattier of the two tatty ends of Chaussée d'Ixelles, incongruously situated near a shisha bar, a plumbers and high-end hifi shop.  I must have trudged past it numerous times in the last 56 months.  I have ventured into the shop, but I'd never tried the restaurant before until now.  It must have been the curtains at the window that deterred me.  Plus there's a bar at the front where nobody ever seems to be eating or drinking and you can't see in very far.  What does one do in here?  They claim it is a restaurant.

But I did enter, and then I discovered Dolma's speciality: the all-you-can-cram-in vegetarian buffet!  It's been available since 1997 and is now the most popular thing they do, concocted by a team each day and including a choice of around 12 different starters and main dishes, including a soup and other side dishes.  The week's menu is available online so you can pick your preferred day in advance.  Some of the dishes are vegan.  This week Tuesday and Wednesday win out for me.  

Actually there are plenty of customers, but they're all cocooned away in a extension at the back with the Friday-Saturday piano, talking not too loudly, drinking things that are good for them, eating wholesomely and fully- and rounding it all off with a chocolate slice or apple pie.  I relish the feeling of serenity; warm yellow walls, pine and Tibetan influences just a few strides from noisy Place Flagey.  Regulars at a neighbouring table advise us to just go and attack the buffet rather than wait.  We do.  And then we go back again. Now, stomach tightly packed with every variety of bean, pulse, rice and grain, I rue my earlier expressed desire for "a light, healthy meal".   But nobody stops you returning, not even my dining partner-in-crime, watching me with amused eyes while I scan others' plates for more of that delicious tofu something- or-other, the feta frittata or that sweet potato puree.  This is serious refuelling that unfolds in serene stages.  At dessert, some kind of restraint is required, in the form of a polite notice asking us to eat just the one slice.  I take mine and as I slowly chew on cinnamony apples, I watch the other guests do the same.

I wasn't expecting to overdo it with vegetarian food.  But then, if I could cook like this, I would eat vegetarian more often. It's nothing complicated, certainly - just simple and delicious, and my digestive system approves.  I cannot eat another bean.

Fascinating fact: I tried Tibetan meditation in Brussels last year.




Le Dolma is open Tuesday to Saturday 12:00- 14:00 and 19:00 - 21:30 (although the buffet closes at 22:00)

The buffet costs 18 euro at lunch-time and 22 euro in the evening (not including drinks)
For reservations call 02 649 89 81


Chaussée d'Ixelles, 329
1050 Ixelles
Brussels

Le Greenwich

Becinbrussels is cold, and craving homely places with an open fire.  She would much rather not attack the washing up.  So instead of writing about other places she has been promising to write about for ages - or writing about herself, for a completely different purpose - here is another take on Le Greenwich, but focussed this time on the food.

It is rather beautiful, you see.  So beautiful I want to sit in here of an afternoon all on my own, cradling my beverage and looking dreamily at the dorures.  And then a last walk through past turquoise walls, mahogany, regimented tables, black-white tiled bathroom and cash register, out of my Victorian gentleman's club.  But the chess players and their smoky haze are gone, and with all those gleaming lights, knowledgeable - but commercially minded - waiters, dark wood and gilding it's hard to imagine them coming back.  Which is a shame, because that was supposed to be what Le Greenwich was all about.  

Even though the liveried waiters seem to presume that you will eat here of an evening, and that scruffy artists are no longer exactly welcomed, Le Greenwich is now a striking place to linger over a beer.  The bar has been scrubbed, preened and beautified - 5 million euros of regional funding and the owner's investment have been lavished on it, after all.  No wonder they want you to eat.  The food prices are a little higher than you might expect for a Brussels brasserie.  As my friend observed; "il faut rembourser les dorures!"

I say thank goodness someone stepped in to save Le Greenwich!  For too long this dark, dingy, sad bar had traded on a reputation long since lost in its years of damp and grime. However, despite the efforts to replace chess players with hungry tourists, I would say savour the surroundings over a beer - have one, have two, have seven - but leave the food alone for the moment.  And perhaps, eventually, if we all insist in turning up with chess boards the management will relent and let us play!

Probably the only thing you could eat here before were some peanuts as you hunched over your chess game, oblivious to all the hidden beauty.  In my imagination I want to see the overgrown, unwashed beer drinkers of yesteryear come back in; I want to see Magritte's face and know what he makes of it.  But instead all the curious characters we're likely to see are tourists: and the owner has wisely chosen a selection of Belgian meals to pull them in: including such staples as lapin à la kriek, boulettes, carbonnades and, I think, eels.

We have a burger and boulettes (meatballs).  I decide that trying a Belgian cuisine staple is a good way to test  culinary pretensions.

The first few mouthfuls taste fine.  But then, an alarming discovery.  I think I spy foie gras on my friend's burger.  "No, no, it cannot be!"  Says my friend.  "It's like low quality pâté."  This cannot be foie gras.

It is foie gras; the waiter confirms it.  In any case, foie gras just adds pretension to a burger that isn't actually very good.  "I don't think it's a good idea to add foie gras to a burger", my friend says.  In any case, we judge the burger not worth the 16 euros we paid for it.  You can have cheaper and better elsewhere on my blog, but then there is the question of the surroundings - and those dorures.

I start the boulettes and several mouthfuls in we have another problem: a salty problem.  True, I don't add salt to anything much, but this meal is providing my weekly allowance of salt in one overloaded sitting.  I can feel it coating my lips.  Midway through, the dish has to be abandoned.  I have a headache and am ravaged by thirst.  The chips are thin, salty and moreish; Morgan Spurlock tormentors better at home in a fast food restaurant.  Perhaps the chef just slipped with the salt shaker?  I'm left wondering how in a land of such of renowned frites, we're left eating fries of such low quality. 

Meanwhile, the bread is judged to be pretty good.

Bread conversation in Le Greenwich, sometime in May 2012

Lui: "Pour savoir si un pain est bon il y a deux critères.  La croûte doit être épaise et croustillante, et la mie de pain, elle doit avoir des gros trous."

 (Pregnant pause, while Becinbrussels absorbs this nugget, wisely deciding against questioning this juicy piece of received French wisdom)

..."Mais pas partout, quoi"

Moi: hein?  Et ce pain-ci? 

And so, the verdict on this bread: Not bad at all.  It has one of the two criteria: the holes.  But the croûte (crust) is molle (soft)....  

More about my bread tasting another time.  

With such an effort made on the surroundings, the food has a bit of catching up to do.

rue des Chartreux 7

1000 Brussels 

Tel: 02 511 41 67