You probably remember the story of my dramatic conversion to mushrooms and consequent life-altering addiction to them.
Well, on Saturday my love reached a new heavenly level at this restaurant in the St Gilles area of Brussels. Recommended to me by someone who I have now discovered has not actually been yet (pick up the phone and make the reservation now, Simon!), Rasmus and I decided to go there as our Christmas present to each other. A little delayed but we think it counts since it is still January.
I have no pictures so this is what you need to do. Go to this page… go on, I mean it, I’ll wait for you here.
Ok, now click on the picture on the left of the top row. We were sitting upstairs at the far end of the mezzanine. Cool huh?
Wanna see what we watched the whole time? Bottom row, far right. Yes, we had a bird-eye view of all the proceedings.
In typical British/Danish style we turned up at 7pm (not an unreasonable time for dinner right?!) and the place was EMPTY. Like, there was not another patron there, and they were still carrying in all the boxes of mushrooms and truffles and cheeses… but we got a bottle of chardonnay and waited patiently. It was actually really interesting watching it all happen.
They put their menu up on the wall behind the bar and I assume it changes every day depending on what they feel like because we watched the re-write the whole menu in that first half hour of sipping chardonnay. We found the one English-speaking waitress and persuaded us to translate the whole menu for us (hey, I’m only on my 6th lesson). The idea is that you order three or four dishes and share them. And all of them have either mushrooms, foie gras or truffles in them. And all of them are AMAZING.
We started with this Italian sausage with truffle in it, then had these like-nothing-else-on-this-earth flat mushrooms stuffed with meat and spices, then had foie gras creme brulee (yes, you read that correctly, it was definitely unlike anything I have ever tried) and finally this baked cheese with wee mushrooms for dipping.
Sorry if you wanted a better description of the food by the way. My defence for not actually knowing the name of anything we ate is 1. It was all in French, 2. My mushroom knowledge is shockingly poor despite said addiction and 3. Quite a lot of chardonnay had been consumed by this time, mostly by me since Rasmus was driving.
But I cannot recommend this place more highly. It is so trendy without being snotty, it is small enough that you feel a wee bit special, the staff are wonderfully friendly, and the food is delicious and original. Oh, and if you go, definitely sit where we sat because half the fun is watching the terribly laid back chef calmly cooking up this amazing feast.
