Meal #49 : Belgium

Despite being one of Europe’s smallest countries, Belgium has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. It invented chips, for one thing, and is justifiably famous for both its high quality chocolate and its exceptional beer. All of which almost but doesn’t quite make up for it having given the world the Brussels sprout...

The Belgian Beer Café
557 St Kilda Road

European beer halls seem to be the latest fad in Australian drinking, just as Irish pubs took us by storm in the 90s. This merry venue on St Kilda Road is a stellar example of this growing trend. (Spot the Belgian beer pun!) In addition to a stupefying array of fine ales, it also serves Belgian-style food, so last week we went there for Sunday lunch. Our team included Helen, Nick, Rami, Ruvinda, Caroline, Ian, Amanda and the fiercest critic we’ve yet brought to bear on a restaurant, baby Isaac.

By day, the beer café’s airy taproom has a stately feeling, more like a 19th Century palace than the 17th Century tavern it resembles by night. The furniture is polished wood, the lights are designed to resemble old gaslights and the walls are decorated with musical instruments and murals of elegant German script. A further touch of class is added by the statue of a pissing baby on the bar.

(In case you were wondering, this is a homage to a famous Belgian statue, the manneken pis, which has graced a fountain in Brussels since the 17th century.)

(And if you are still wondering, it apparently commemorates a Belgian infant prince who won a battle by peeing on the enemy from a basket where he’d been hung to motivate the troops.)

(If you are STILL wondering, er, join the club.)

We are pleased to say that, even with a baby in our group, we behaved with far more decorum that the Belgian royalty of yesteryear. In fact, for a group of Aussies in the same room as one of the most extensive beer selections in Melbourne, we had a remarkably sedate day out.

The meal

The menu was divided into three main sections – beer food (small entrees/ sides under $10), entrees (usually under $20) and mains (between $20 and $30). There was also a separate section just for mussels, currently going at around $27 for a gigantic pot with chips, as well as the all important desserts (around $12). The bread, a light flavourful sour dough, was complimentary and came served in a brown paper bag.

One thing that leapt out was that the food on offer was very French. Gallic favourites like cassoulet (sausage, duck and pork stew), terrine and tartifette (crispy pork belly) were prominent on the menu, as were a number of dishes featuring snails. While many of these dishes looked tempting, we were after an exclusively Belgian experience.

In an attempt to capture the Belgian spirit, many of our diners simply ordered frites, ie chips! In fact, one has to suspect that some diners have been waiting until we got to Belgium so that they could legitimately order chips as their main course. These particular chips did their home nation proud and came with a thick, almost chunky, mayonnaise.

From the “beer food” list we had the meatballs. Made with veal and pork mince, these were flavoured with witlof, a common Belgian ingredient, and beer, an even more common Belgian ingredient.

From the mains menu came the hearty Flemish carbonnade. One of the few dishes on the menu that stood out as being specifically Flemish, rather than French, this was a slow-cooked beef stew flavoured with onion and, you guessed it, beer. It was accompanied by another Flemish specialty, a kind of potato mash called stoemp. Light in texture, similar to Paris mash, it was made with carrot, leek and bacon and consequently somewhat sweet.

The true stars of the meal were the mussels. Belgians devour vast quantities of these hapless bivalves and the Belgian Beer Café celebrates this tradition with, among other things, a mussel eating competition! Getting through a whole serve was a challenge in itself, as they came by the pot-load, with chips and mayo on the side for good measure. We had the Provencal, swimming in a sauce of tomato, red capsicum, black olives and fresh basil.

The beer

It would be wrong to go to a place called the Belgian Beer Café and order soft drink. Leffe blonde, a popular Belgian abbey beer, was available on tap. It’s fairly light for a Belgian brew, whereas the Westmalle Trappist Tripel delivered a more complex taste. A testament to how much time Belgian monks must spend working on their brewing skills rather than on more traditionally monkish behaviours, this is a beer you appreciate like a fine wine. And at $11.50 a glass you would certainly want to! Bellevue Kriek, a disconcertingly red beer made with sour cherries, divided opinions. Some enjoyed its combination of fruity, sour and malty flavours, while others were put off, with one diner describing it as “Dimetapp Beer”.

The dessert, oh the dessert

Belgium’s famous chocolate was thoroughly in evidence in the dessert section and we went from extravagance to extravagance. The chocolate pudding was double-cooked so as to be crispy on the outside and rich and gooey on the inside. It would be hard to imagine a more indulgent chocolate experience… unless of course you’d had the chocolate mousse, which was served with a beer coulis. Yes, it is true, the Belgians put beer in everything.

Last but not least, we could hardly go past Belgian waffles. The ones we had were “Liege-style”, apparently, which translated to lots of cinnamon, stacks of vanilla-flavoured Crème chantilly and chocolate sauce. They also came with crumbly sticks of Belgian chocolate (“like Flakes, only good” as one diner eloquently described them) – which were at first confused for cinnamon sticks because of the strong smell of cinnamon from the waffles. Mmmmm.

The verdict:
We were a bit of a weary group this week. We have covered fifty countries now and after so many weeks exploring Asia, the heavy meals of Europe are starting to put pressure on both our waistlines and our wallets. The Belgian beer café was no reprieve on either score. The quality of everything was very good however and the place had a comfortable and authentically European atmosphere.

How Belgian it was, as opposed to French, was at times questionable. From our experience, it would be easy to think that Belgian cuisine consists of nothing but stew, chips, beer and waffles, with maybe the occassional shellfish. Indeed, the main distinguishing feature of Belgian cuisine seems to be the use of beer as the crowning ingredient in everything. Another seemingly ubiquitous ingredient was pork. Even the vegetable dishes and salads often had bacon in them and for kosher and vegetarian diners the options here were somewhat limited. If eating just chips and chocolate is seen as a limitation, that is, though some would argue that point.

Descriptions of Belgian cuisine tend to emphasise its simplicity – straight-forward meals of high quality ingredients served in copious amounts. The Belgian Beer Café certainly met these criteria and, whether you are after fine beer and snacks, or more mussels than you can shake a stick at, it’s a pretty good bet. Just watch that your beer tab doesn’t get too high – those monks don’t peddle the drink of the devil cheap, you know.