Becinbrussels interviews.....Becinbrussels

Goodness!  Becinbrussels is one year old today.  Where did the idea come from? 

It was brewing for a while.  I realised that any creativity my brain had was slowly seeping away.  Every day the only thing I wrote were meeting requests; "Dear Mr X, would you be available to meet Mr Y on a, b or c date in November?"  And all I seemed to read were emails and the news (and there were usually not many positive things to report in there!)  So I thought, I like restaurants, I like cafes - why not write about them?

And you're glad you did?

Oh yes!  Keeping this blog has been all about escapism with, I have to admit, the addition of a splash of subversion!  If I could find something else to write about than meeting requests, printing or photocopying, then I knew all was not lost, that my brain would not shrivel, and I was still capable of independent thought rather than groupthink!  It also gave me an excuse to continue getting out and about in this city, rather than sticking to my usual haunts.  And a few people have told me that they like it, and that it can even be helpful, so I'll continue until they tell me to stop.

What next for Becinbrussels?

I think I should probably make the blog look a bit better, but as you can tell, I'm a bit of a novice.  That's another great thing about doing this blog: I've learned new skills: I now have a vague idea what html is, and I dabble in a bit of photo editing.  It gives me something to talk about.  I'd also like to solicit ideas from people who read this blog.  It's hard to find the time to research new places, and there are some areas of town where I've barely scratched the surface.  Reader recommendations and guest blogs could help!

What kind of place do you have to be to get featured on becinbrussels?

Well, as you have probably noticed, I don't go to expensive places much.  That's mainly because I cannot afford to, but it's also because I like places that have atmosphere, where something amusing happens to me, or that seem to sum up what Brussels is about.  That's not to say that I always really like the places I write about, but they have to provoke some kind of reaction.  Sometimes starched white tablecloths and napkins just don't inspire me that much. 

 

It's 27 November today.  Do you have a tip for me?  It's rather grey outside. 

Ugh, yes.  So it is.  Well, I went for a recce of the Christmas market last night, Plaisirs d'Hiver.  Bitterly cold with gusts of evil wind it was.  It wasn't long before I was enticed over to a German stall selling sausages near the Bourse.  And very good my Bratwurst was too.  Smoked hot dog which you sliced into with your teeth, accompanied by slimy trails of onions and ketchup.  Very warming and satisfying.  Somehow I managed to go home with my hands smelling of curry sauce, but it made me smile anyway.

And finally....

To readers of this blog, thank you!

Le Neptune

Pourquoi Bruxelles?  What kind of fish is a féra exactly? Questions are floating in the air, as I try to stay out of the way of a young chef gutting a tuna.  The said tuna is prepared expertly, with a rather large knife.  I'm reminded that I'm talking to someone who has a important job to do, preparing a five course menu for the evening's diners, and I need to summon up some interesting questions or this busy man will give me short shrift.  But I keep focussing on the tuna.  Now I know (sort of) how to gut a fish.

Nicolas's answers come in slick and fast as he moves on to his second tuna. There is no English translation for féra: the fish that featured on the menu last week.  It's a fish from the Alps, caught in Lake Geneva and Lake Annecy.  Together we consider what appropriate English translations might be for various marrow and squash-like ingredients I tasted here, but the English language proves to be more generalising than I'd like it to be. And then we move on to favourite vegetables: mine are probably swede and parsnip (neither of which seems particularly prized in Belgium.)  The chef wants to know what swede is.  I try to explain, aided by some flamboyant hand gestures, that swede is like a small orange turnip.  The attempt fails.

"Delicate" I think is the word I would use to describe my meal here at Le Neptune.  The five course tasting menu was a gastronomic experience with each course introduced at table; something to be savoured, despite straining to hear your friends across the table.  Stay away if ravenously hungry and coveting calories: elsewhere on this blog there are plenty of carnivorous suggestions to sate your hunger until your sides ache.  Instead this is about your taste buds recognising and appreciating flavours: delicate bergamot and sage flavoured broth, a honey sesame biscuit perched on a quince compote....  You'll also notice the absence of butter, cheese or cream.  The 39 euro menu comprises five small tasting plates of well-balanced ingredients.  Flavours work harmoniously rather than stunning you each time with powerful, exotic colours or startling presentation.  If you're impatient for the next installment, there's always the excellent Fournil du Saint Aulaye bread to nibble on.  And there's an extensive blackboard list of seriously nice wines, should you be worried about the lack of menu choice (hah, none!)  Nicolas used to run a wine bar in Geneva, and still orders bottles from growers he knows personally.  You could really splash out here if you wanted to.   

To sum up: a bistrot in a former umbrella shop, where there is only space for about twenty covers, and you have to cross the tiny kitchen to reach the tiny bathroom.  The kitchen is open - open!  This is a chef who has confidence (arrogance, even) and nothing to hide: even the fridge is transparent; rien à cacher et tout à montrer.....  I don't want to be hidden away in a cellar, says Nicolas.   

Questions to a chef....

Favourite ingredients?  Vegetables, fish.  Not meat so much.

Why a five dish menu?. Wouldn't three be simpler?  Five is more fun.  And this isn't work.

Earliest food memories?  In my grandparents garden around a table in the Haute-Savoie.

One night in Le Neptune Becinbrussels ate:

Tartare de Féra aux courgettes jaunes, sauge, melon et aneth

Aile de raie pochée dans un bouillon de bergamote

Joue de boeuf purée de potimarron, pâtisson et légumes de saison

Assortiment fromages de Julien Harard (+6 EUR supplément)

Compotée de coins, verveine et vanille

Mousse au chocolat

 The evening menu (five courses) is 39 Euro

Lunch menu (three courses) is 25 Euro

48, rue Lesbroussart
for reservations: 04 89 30 33 50

The Old Hack

The Fish and Chips look good.  In fact lots of dishes on adjacent tables look good as I survey the scene and eating punters in The Old Hack, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my meal.  There are plenty of suited business types around, but the decor is surprisingly spartan, even for someone who is used to seeing gastro pubs taking over from ye oldie-worldy interiors stuffed full with memorabilia and bric-a-brac.  A simple mousy-coloured curtain conceals the door, and a mural of the Daily Mail sub-editors table from 1947 is the only thing that keeps the blackboard menu company. 

However, several days later and memories of my lunch in The Old Hack still refuse to fade.  In the meantime I have slowly withdrawn from gossipy lunches with colleagues and drinks with friends, instead grappling with work, translations and seemingly interminable study.  Yes, I have become a rather unsociable being!  I began my weekend presenting a group project on skype to an (imaginary?) audience.  After several minutes of ramblings and a dodgy internet connection, I had the unsettling feeling that I was talking to myself, and my computer and I came to the tacit agreement that this should not go on.  I am craving interaction with people, rather than computer screens and virtual communities - or guinea pigs or tortoises, who I see on a weekly basis.  Of course, eating and drinking would be optional.  But oh for a job where a computer is no longer necessary!  Sometimes I feel like I was born several decades too late....

The scent of my meal wafts towards me as it proceeds through the maze of tables, held aloft proudly by our host.  I can see steam, and smell honey.  In moments of escapism I can still conjure up an image of that jambonneau advancing towards me, and my nose almost twitches at that distinctive honey smell.  Jambonneau does not normally smell of honey: it does in The Old Hack.  I have ordered a mini version, with a pumpkin and potato mash, which comes with a pot of sweet mustard.  Hmm, mustard.  I'm not convinced of the merits of mustard, but I like this one.  Even though, with the delicious flavour, it's not strictly necessary.  The mash reminds me of all that is good about British (yes, British) autumnal cooking - potato mash combined with parsnip, swede, carrot or pumpkin - all adding to a delicious comforting and filling combination.  I have written before about my love of this stodgy, flavoursome staple - luckily I live in a country where this can be indulged with carbonnades and stoemp galore!

While I am lost somewhere close to my culinary version of Heaven, my friend is attacking her spicy green curry with chicken and shrimps, presented with crackers and coconut shavings.  It is copious and tasty, as I can attest, but I am wedded to my colourful plate of jambonneau.  

The owner of our guest house in the Ardennes told me that there used to be many British and Irish pubs around the Schuman area in Brussels.  There are still a few dotted about, but inside The Old Hack I do not feel in Britain or Ireland.  This must be a european version of a Irish pub, and a very tasty one at that.  Book in advance, I say. 

Hack…"a writer or journalist producing dull, unoriginal work" (Source: OED online)

Booze n'Blues

Fakir Hindou will tell your fortune, if you want her to.  She sits atop the wooden bar in her wooden box: just yellowing paper and a whole circle of possible predictions.  Only today Fakir's glimpse into my future is erratic, to say the least.

"Tout marche à vos souhaits", she says.

Suspicious, I insert 20 cents again.  My companion has just had the same result and I am not sure I like Fakir's prediction of my future: it is not always good to have everything you wish for!  If we did, what would inspire us to work hard, to plot grand schemes, to try new things?  The landlady admits that the spinning wheel of fortune does tend to get stuck.  So we receive our twenty cents back, for a new prediction, and I only consider afterwards that this is like feeding coins into a slot machine or having my palm read, or refusing to walk under ladders, or praying - we feel it might help in some way, but are not quite sure how or why.


The jukebox is not working either.  That is a pity, because there are few customers and I could have played whatever I wanted, within a certain epoch.  I take a sip of Grimbergen, and decide to talk to the lady at the bar instead.  Everyone else entering seems to think I am the bar lady.  So I get up and talk, and when I return a few minutes later, as if to punish me, someone has drunk the rest of my beer.

Booze n'Blues has been family-run for the last 13 years.  I've come here several times before, when the jukebox was working.  Not much has changed.  The smoking ban has come in, making the interior a little easier on the lungs, but paintwork and memorabilia and the not-for-the-sqeamish toilet and urinal combo downstairs could do with some touching up.  But this sense of timelessness is really the appeal: I know that if I leave Brussels and return in five years Blues n'Blues will still look the same, and the jukebox might be playing Chuck Berry or Johnny Cash.  Nobody seems too concerned.  It's a personal space of Zappa and Zeppelin papered nostalgia: it is what is is.

Perhaps a little sawdust on the floor to add to the wooden stools, tables and bar and Miller Light signs, and I would feel that I was in rural South Carolina or Tennessee.  But I don't feel quite in America.  The lady tells me her brother opened Blues n'Blues after a former bar, Blues Corner, closed down.  Now he lives upstairs.  He has never been to the US due to a fear of flying, so has missed out on annual blues meetings there.  Instead he has his music here: and a bar interior that reminds me of the US, here in central Brussels.

Booze n'Blues

rue des riches Claires 20

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