Les gens que j'aime

I like Les Gens que j'aime.  There's something very endearing about a place which makes an effort, has chosen a 60s theme but hasn't gone overboard with it, and where people tap away on laptops with a tea and bagel beside them, undisturbed.  It's not effortlessly cool or a gourmet's paradise.  But it's relaxed, charming and plays The Doors a short stride away from the Grand Place: welcome respite from acres of cellophane-wrapped boxed chocolates, lacy aprons and thousands of Mannequin Pis corkscrews.  I keep meaning to buy a specimen of the latter for my fridge, but I never seem to get round
to it.  I think it's all to do with my aversion to shops with strip fluorescent lighting. Take me somewhere dark and atmospheric instead!

I headed upstairs, where the lighting does seem a bit strange, as if you're seated in a Berlin museum showcasing an East German 1960s interior.  There are a few bars in Brussels with galleries like this one: L'Archiduc is one, but I also recently discovered Le Bonnefooi (another musical cafe to be featured here at some point).  The waiter did not seem that happy to have to traipse upstairs to serve us, but we lay on the charm by serenading him from the balcony and telling him how we liked it up there with the chandelier.  I sat at a little table with its tablecloth of pyschedelic circles, just managing to fold legs away beneath it while I sipped ginger tea and tried to stop the pot dribbling.  Last time I had a bagel here, with brie, honey, walnuts and apple.  This time I chose - from a small meal selection of bagels, burger, meatloaf and waffles - the lasagne.  Smoke from the kitchen rose to join us: we haven't quite worked out the extractor fan, said our waiter friend as he emerged from the stairway with our food.  He seemed to take to the balcony as well.  And looked pensive when he said that they hadn't been that busy over the Summer.

The lasagne is hot, filling, drowning in cheese and drawing me in.   And the verdict on the assembled bagel-burger?  "C'est bon, mais c'est dur a manger!"  It was plenty-for both of us.  And the place?  Pleasant and relaxed for impromptu lunch or evening gatherings, a short walk away from busier and more touristy venues: the meals cost between 6 and 14 euros.  And, our waiter friend tells us, the venue was formerly two separate houses and a naff chocolate shop.  It goes without saying that I prefer it in its current incarnation.  

Becinbrussels eats bagels, lasagne, anything really!  Just don't expect me to be hungry again until some hours have passed.

De Dolle Mol

It is Thursday afternoon in De Dolle Mol, and Jan Bucquoy is in contemplative mood.  “In some countries tolerance for doing a psychological study is higher than in others”, he muses; “But Belgium is the simplest.  I had the idea of going to New York to ask a chambermaid for a pair of pants, but then I reflected I could have ended up in prison.”

I have to agree.   But then Belgians have had several decades to get used to Bucquoy and his antics: the mock Coups d’état; the provocative re-portrayals of Tintin doing things Tintin shouldn't do; a film featuring entarteur (pie-throwing) Noël Godin; and of course his Musée du Slip, which started in 1990 at Bucquoy’s home in Schaerbeek, and has persisted in various locations since then, fanning the reputation of its already infamous creator.

Bucquoy regularly breaks off our conversation to wander round this weathered Flemish bar.  This gifts me a few moments where I don't need to concentrate, so I stupidly take in the utilitarian wooden tables, Marxist books by the window, a vaguely suspect-looking green plant....  De Dolle Mol has always been an anti-establishment place, linked to the birth of the Flemish Amnesty International movement, Women’s liberation and the B-generation, and nowadays the home of dreamy revolutionaries and self-styled outlaws, and a few admiring teenagers.   It was Bucquoy who persuaded a Flemish Minister to save the bar, after rising rents forced it to close.  Nowadays musicians sometimes play and there is space for a theatre upstairs.

While my brain is trying to make sense of the "why", my eyes are taking in the "who".  I spy Lenin, Chairman Mao, de Gaulle, Napoleon…. All with vibrant red lips and with a frilly object on their head.  Surely it can’t be – a pair of ladies’ knickers?  Of course they are, and it turns out that these (washed) specimens have been given willingly over the years by various personalities, and it is Bucquoy who completes the montage: deciding whose underwear adorns the head of each venerable old General, Dictator, politician.  The pants form an inverted triangle – a symbol for the liar used in Medieval paintings, Bucquoy says.  Only Magritte is spared this treatment: “I figured that surrealism was already strange enough!”

Meanwhile our conversation is paused again, and something on the wall has just made me laugh, next to the pant samples generously donated by Plastique Bertrand and Brigitte la Haie:

"Please complete the aforementioned coupon and return it together with your pants."

I struggle to imagine how anyone could refuse.  Do some of these people have no sense of humour?!  I look round at a leering DSK, at Clinton, at Sarkozy, at Michael Jackson - it is clear that this is not "art for art's sake".  It is not just who is represented (Napoleon, not Mother Teresa), but the reaction this provokes in you, the viewer.  We and the pants are there to remind these people that they are just like us, underneath.  We're like their conscience.

But that is still not enough for me.  Indeed it is in the hope of coaxing out explanations to satisfy any literary critic - no, of ploughing Bucqouy's soul- that I'm here today.  I even started reading Guy Debord and something he wrote about capitalism and consumerism, but to be honest I was struggling by paragraph 65.  I quote an interesting passage at Bucquoy, and he flashes me an amused look.  "That's nice," he says.  As our conversation progresses I am beginning to feel that Bucquoy is not taking this - or himself - very seriously.  And what of Bucquoy?  "No, the Director doesn't wear pants", he says, mischeviously.

Anyway I think others have had something to say about all this:

"plus il contemple, moins il vit ; plus il accepte de se reconnaître dans les images dominantes du besoin, moins il comprend sa propre existence et son propre désir."

 

La Société du Spectacle (30), Guy Debord

How can we escape from a world as Debord described it?  "Il faut que le pouvoir puisse

être mis en question", says Bucquoy, simply.  That means attacking the visible symbols, the people behind power, with the potent symbol of sexual transgression - of nudity.  As Bucquoy puts it, "le sexe, c'est le désordre"  But there's also his warning that criticism can form part of the very capitalist system we all must try and cheat.  Suddenly everything seems linked: there's Tintin denuded and his creator un-masked; and the anti-spectacle to counter Debord's malevolent Orwellian state that controls what we wear and what we think.  This is Bucquoy's mock coup d'état, which used to happen on 21 May (in the days when Belgium had a government).  21 May?  "Il pleut pas en général."  Unlike the 21 July.....

This performance reflects events elsewhere in the world, but is a reminder that democracy does not change anything.  Nor do elections.  Instead Bucquoy wants a revolution!  But until that day he's happy being the barman in De Dolle Mol: sending off another 1000 letters to solicit new pant specimens; dreaming of a time when Ministers and riches could be distributed according to a lottery system and power is delegated to the regions.  However there is no need for any of that at present: with no Government he is content with things as they are.  At least nobody is putting up taxes. 

De Dolle Mol is open Wednesday to Sunday from 16:00, until everyone has had enough to drink and it is time to go home.  But Becinbrussels drank apple juice on this occasion.

In de Nieuwe Visbank

Do you remember that scene in Pretty Woman, where, as part of her initiation into upper class society, Julia Roberts is in a restaurant eating snails?

Sometimes in restaurants I feel like Julia's character.  I ate snails for only the second time in my life here, at In de Nieuwe Visbank.  The first time was in a dimly lit restaurant in the Latin Quarter, where I bravely chose them for my starter.  Unwisely as it turned out, because the neighbouring tables of impossibly gorgeous  young men and women on evening dates were

rather too close for comfort.  Unlike some of the other customers, I did not feel an urgent need to impress, but I still felt curious eyes swing towards me when my garlicky snails arrived, along with a curious long metal implement, that looked like it properly belonged beside a dentist's chair.  In fact there were two implements: one like a mini forcep for gripping the snail; and the other like a long metal toothpick.  This second one was a little disturbing: it reminded me of an ancient Egyptian embalming tool, used for extracting tissue from body cavities.


Rather inexpertly, I managed to grip the snails with my forceps, and scoop out the buttery, garlicky interior.  I reflected that embarrassment could happen several ways: either I would succeed in pinging the snail across the restaurant onto the dress of some beautifully attired French girl; or I could catapult it into her companion's wine glass; or propel it into the path of a waiter, who would catch it deftly, Pretty Woman style.  The prospect of garlicky breath for hours after was of little significance compared to these other potential disasters!  And yet somehow this eating episode passed without incident, and I felt proud of myself for forgoing the steak for a change, and trying something new.

Fast forward several years and I am 30 years old, and thankfully less readily embarrassed.  I've been to In de Nieuwe Visbank in Grimbergen several times, and think it is a great place to eat things that you don't eat very often. Yes, here I have eaten delicious, exceedingly garlicky snails.  On another occasion I've had frogs legs - I hadn't realised quite how bony they were, but again they are quite delicious in garlic!  And on still another occasion I've eaten lobster in front of my boyfriend's parents, probably only for the third time in my life.  The restaurant has tablecloths, a lobster tank, well presented dishes and attentive table service, but I am much more at ease here than I was in that Parisian restaurant.

Of course you can eat steak, and plenty of other meat dishes.  But the name of the restaurant refers to fish, and that's what I generally have for the main course.  There's sole, red mullet, snails, and many other fish, but I am stumped by the French names and still would not know the names in English.  Fish is one of the big gaps in my general vocabulary.  Note to self: I need to learn the names for fish, plants and birds.

What would I recommend you eat?  Well, I like the homemade fishy croquettes as starter, as well as the snails and frogs legs, of course.  For the main course you could have sole, or half a lobster prepared in several different ways.  Mine (pictured) is aux petits legumes, with a creamy sauce.  I realised when eating it that I would have preferred a more low-key sauce, because the creaminess detracted from the flavour of the lobster.  

My lobster aux petits legumes

Prices are reasonable, but understandably slightly higher than places where lobster, snails and frogs legs are not on the menu.  A two or three course meal for two could cost at least 100 euros, with or without wine.  However if you have a starter, you will probably not require dessert as the food is generally quite rich. 

On a warm evening, eat outside with the view of Grimbergen's church.

Something meaty: canard?

 Tel: 02 270 94 04

Les Super Filles du Tram

What makes a really good burger?
Is it simply the sum of all its parts, providing you use quality ingredients?  Or is it really just a matter of what meat you use and how you cook it?   As I continue resolutely with my burger eating challenge perhaps I'm finally approaching some kind of an answer.  However after every one I sample the list of potential burger joints does not seem to diminish.  Yes, I will be eating burgers for some time yet. 


The staff in Les Super filles du tram are breezy and friendly.  On my second visit we get in without a reservation and join an already busy group of customers, chatting animatedly.  While we wait there are the wall murals to look at, and the smell of chargrilled burgers wafts towards us from the kitchen at the back.  I am tapping my feet in anticipation: after a couple of scorched hours at the Brussels beer festival, squeezing past people to sneak down two Super des Fagnes beers, I am ravenously hungry.

This time the burgers arrive, not on wooden chopping boards, but on curved and personalised plastic trays.  The chips are still in their customary flower pot, but I must admit I find the trays a little off-putting: they remind me of school dinners or the youth hostel meals where food is served on wipe-cleanable trays.  I suppose wooden chopping boards were not as hygienic, but the plastic trays also have the effect of making the burgers appear smaller.  They are smaller than other burgers I've sampled recently, but they are tall, and impaled on cocktail sticks to keep all the ingredients together.

And what of those ingredients?  Well, here the emphasis seems to be on pleasing everybody, but with a trend towards using posher burger ingredients.  For non-red meat eating customers, there's the chicken breast and lemongrass scampi burger; for the fish eaters, the salmon burger; for vegetarians a vegetable cake burger; for the conscientious beef consumer, an organic burger.....   All of these come with flavours galore: not just cheddar cheese, but comté, gorgonzola, mozzarella, St. Marcellin.  Not just red onion rings, but caramelised onions, grilled red peppers and courgettes.  There's even a foie gras burger....  Never one for me.

So what was wrong?  I'd returned here to try the burgers a second time, but it only reinforced my view that the burgers are too dry - not juicy enough - and hence somehow do not bond together with the lovely ingredients and melt together in a satisfying way in your mouth.  Perhaps I'm answering my own question here: it seems that luxury ingredients count for little when the meat itself is not juicy - just give me a simple cheeseburger instead!  And yet it's obvious that Les Super Filles du tram try very hard, and that the restaurant is popular with many people, it's just that one fundamental aspect is not quite right.

It must be partly linked to fat content of the burger, we muse, as we slowly finish the remnants of our ingredient pile.  You can have a healthy, good quality, lean burger, but if there is no fat then the flavour is hard to recreate without recourse to artificial means (incidentally cheap fast food burger restaurants understand this very well).  It can be the same for roasting joints: in our rush to reduce fat at any cost we forget that it is precisely fat that gives meat a lot of its flavour....  But perhaps fat is not the problem, but then what is it?

Time for an interlude.  And a trip to the toilets: a little hidden grotto resplendent in its cloak of multi-coloured post-it notes carpeting the walls.  I finger a piece of paper and pen by the sink and wonder whether I should leave some kind of mark for those that follow.  What should I write: "Becinbrussels was here"?  No, that would be no good at all.  I've never been one for leaving notes on toilet walls!


Later doubts begin to crowd in: should I be writing about places that are not as good as I'd hoped, when others may disagree with my view?  I seek advice from a few friends: write as you find, they say.  So that's what I will continue to do.  Given the choice, I'd eat a burger at one of the other establishments I've reviewed.  And it's the same for the chunky chips too. 

Becinbrussels ate a Jurançon bio ou presque burger and her friend ate a Classique.  She awarded her own 6 out of ten.  She still has a long way, and a lot of burgers, to go.  Perhaps she is in denial, but really she should just do some more sport.

http://www.superfillesdutram.com/

rue Lesbroussart, 22
1050 Ixelles

Fat Boys

There are collective gasps and groans from the crowd in Place du Luxembourg.  We're squeezed on benches outside an American style sports bar; a bar with a European twist for we're dining al fresco and cheering on France versus Lithuania in a basketball game.  It's amazing the waiters keep tabs on what's going on.  To make things more challenging there's an open air techno concert just getting underway, so there's no hope of conversation.  We're here for eating, drinking, cheering for the underdog.

In Fat Boys, time is measured in parts of seconds.  The basketball game is divided up into chunks, fast-moving with "time out" stoppage time.  Compared to this, football seems positively pedestrian.  As eating or drinking carries on around us, we the audience are subjected to an excess of stimuli.  You cannot do anything - sip, chew, speak, burp - without a TV screen flickering within a 30 degree tilt of your head.  A sports bar, yes, but here you eat calorific buffalo wings, burgers and fries; while watching your favourite team or teams in action.  Your energies are expended cheering loudly and squeezing the French's dressing or ketchup.  Everything you need for entertainment and satisfaction is here, within reach - it's like a wonderful (or nightmarish) vision of the paranoid mother watching her baby playing video games.  Fat Boys and techno lads, you bring Place du Luxembourg alive!  How appropriate that football, rugby and basketball screens are competing with the Vertical Stage techno blaring from the former Luxembourg station building, and that the parasols of this excessive, hyperactive bar are emblazoned with Red Bull advertising!

As we prepare to order our burger, the techno is vibrating in my core and the basketball match is reaching a gripping climax.  Despite the will of the crowd, France are winning.  My burger, smothered with homemade chili and golden melted cheddar, arrives, and I can barely see it in the darkness.  It is thick, chargrilled and juicy, with onion, gherkin, crisp iceberg lettuce and golden fries that crunch.  The chili topping is delicious paired with the iceberg and molten cheddar.  The baps are ordinary - slightly sugary - not stealing the show.  Iceberg, chili and nachos - as I chew I am reminded of Texas and I yearn to go back. My feet start tapping as I attack the burger, while the music pounds and the crowd groans in dismay as France score again.  

"I've never eaten a burger while dancing before".

The burger isn't excessive and is dispatched.  France have won so I wander inside the bar to console  Lithaunians in the queue for the Ladies toilets.  Inside the bar is emblazoned with football scarves from Germany, England, Spain.  Televisions are stridently blaring, people are drinking out of plastic goblets and nobody is concerned about your age.  I wonder again about the Tex-Mex inspired menu: hot jalepenos, the buffalo wings Louisiana style and the very American idea of excess.  Fat Boys does not aspire to the kind of quantities served up in many US establishments, but there's a feeling of  bravado: of chomping and slurping large quantities while gobbling up coverage of goals, strikes and cheerleaders.  Not less, but MORE is more!  I smile at the memory.


Meanwhile my toes are tapping and my Texas cowboy boots are on.  As others stand around we decide to dance lindy hop to techno in Place du Luxembourg.  My mouth tastes of onion, and I've never attempted to dance the Charleston on cobblestones, to pounding beats from up above in a former railway station.  Nobody bats an eyelid, but somebody gives me a high five!  And after tiring of techno an hour or later, we discover that dancing swing to techno is considerably easier than dancing swing to R n'B on a proper dancefloor. 



Becinbrussels ate a Chili and Cheddar burger off the grill, washed down with beer.  She liked the burger very much, learnt about basketball and came to the conclusion that techno was much more exciting than R n'B.

Burgers range from 12 euro for the "Plain and Simple", to 20.50 for the "Fat Boys Mega" ("Not for the faint hearted" says the Menu)

http://www.fatboys-be.com/ 

02 511 32 66

Tout Bon

Ah, Tout Bon.  I like coming to this corner of Place du Luxembourg for breakfast - or a later brunch on the weekend.

Munch away contentedly on your breads, croissants and jams, just across the square from the monolith European Parliament staring you down with its myriad of glaring, reflective, waspish eyes.  Big Bully.  I know where I'd rather be.



Choosing my breakfast formule is not as simple as you'd think.  I usually opt for ze Continental, which seems to reflect both where I am and who I am these days.  There isn't a English breakfast as such, but there is a good variation on it: you can add bacon and beautifully presented custard yellow fried eggs to your bread selection.  The Continental comprises freshly squeezed juice, tea or coffee, a fresh croissant or pain au chocolat, and a basket of breads.  All breakfasts seem to include access to ze Jams of Delight, placed strategically within fighting distance in the middle of the table, and including chocolat-noisette spread, miel des ruchers mosan (from near Dinant), strawberry and blueberry jam, marmalade, and brown gloopy poiret from the Ardennes (pears slow-cooked without sugar or additives).  For me, the Jams of Delight are the best bit.

However there's another good thing about Tout Bon.  They do real hot chocolate, not the horrible Cécémel stuff.  This one will coat your throat with wonderful chocolatey-ness and fill you with joy.  Unfortunately no formule offers both orange juice and hot chocolate, so you just have to order it separately, instead of your coffee or tea, for a small supplement.  Then I pretend to be French, smearing my bread in jam and dunking the lot in my chocolate.  Wonderful.

Breakfast formulas at Tout Bon cost between 5 and 14 Euros.  They also do decent sandwiches to take away at lunch-time, including posh ingredients such as artichokes.

At Tout Bon Becinbrussels eats:

• pain au chocolat
• lashings of honey
• a bit of blueberry
• un petit peu de poiret
• a slurp of strawberry
• a morsel of bread and marmalade

and then she waddles off.....

www.toutbon.be
+32 (0)2 230 42 44

Choosy Juicebar

Carrot, fennel, celery, beetroot, garlic, cucumber.  All of these are great smoothie ingredients, but only one of them, beetroot, will turn your tongue a pinky red colour.  I also choose beetroot because I don't think I've sampled it in a smoothie before.

Beetroot gives you energy, promotes blood production, encourages your appetite and is easy to digest, I read on Choosy's website afterwards.

Choosy juicebar is run by Laura.  I was glad to come across it yesterday in town, because it was scorching hot and I was still dehydrated from the mojitos and dancing at the boisterous, brilliant Fiesta Latina the previous evening.  Laura's shop is cool, pink and green; one wall taken up by a mural of a forest and with pink birds in the window to populate it.  I'm usually a fan of guapa, the juice shop chain that is taking off in Brussels.  However, Laura's shop does not benefit from industrial sized blenders and juicers, and she uses vegetables that guapa don't, namely beetroot!  Oh hang on, guapa use beetroot too. But I prefer Laura's beetrooty version.

"Why smoothies?"  I ask Laura, when she has a short break from making sandwiches, smoothies and washing up.  "Because I like juice", she says simply.  I couldn't think of any more interesting questions to ask this young entrepreneur, so that was it.   

Carrot-ic evidence: this place is good for you!

 I still don't understand why when I make smoothies at home, they never taste as good as at Choosy, even when following a recipe.  So I will come again!  Laura's list is long....

Becinbrussels and her friend drank a Choupi: pineapple, apple, beetroot, ginger, orange!  (Detox digest)  And a Willy: carrot, ginger, orange.

Small smoothies are at 3.50 euro and large at 4.50.  The large size is generous and particularly good value.

www.bechoosy.be