About this blog

“Beers ’n’ Bites in Brussels” is a blog about places to eat and — most importantly — drink beer in Brussels, the capital of Europe.

Another blog about food, you might think? There are plenty of food blogs indeed, and plenty of blogs about beer as well. The combination of food and beer is not uncommon either, but those are often focused on ‘beer and food pairing’, which is nice, but not what we’re trying to do here.
With this blog, we’d just like to show you places in Brussels where you can have a nice meal, preferably with a good beer, or places where you can go for just a good beer.

We’re not the kind of foodies you’ll find in the most exclusive restaurants: the beer menu is often limited, and portion sizes as well… When we go out for an evening of dinner and drinks, we’ll probably spend more on the beer, than on the food.

We do like to get our money’s worth, though. Good food is nice, a lot of good food is even better. We’re partial to all-you-can eat formulas, but that doesn’t mean we’ll eat anything as long as it is unlimited or cheap… If restaurants use ethically or locally sourced products, that is a big plus, but in the end it all comes down to taste.

Although we really appreciate traditional Belgian beers, especially sours, brewers that try new styles like IPA’s and imperial stouts, excite us just a little bit more. Places serving foreign beers — and I don’t mean the likes of Carlsberg and Corona — immediately have our attention.

You might have noticed we’re not using the expression ‘craft beer’ so far. That’s not because we don’t like the expression — we probably use it quite often — but because it still lacks a proper definition, and is already being abused by bigger, industrial breweries trying to ride the craft beer wave.
So let’s just stick with ‘good beer’, full of taste and made with honest ingredients — rice and corn are fine on a plate, but not in a glass.

Some of our favourite breweries include Cantillon, De la Senne, Struise, and Dochter van de Korenaar in Belgium, and Mikkeller, De Molen, Stone and BrewDog abroad.

Categories

Even though you should be able to have decent beers in all the venues described on this blog — a couple of beerless exceptions notwithstanding — some posts will be in the category Bites only: in those venues you (usually) can’t just go and have a drink without having something to eat. Venues where you’re welcome to have a drink without ordering food will appear in the Beers category, and if there’s something more on the food menu than just cheese and cold cuts, it will appear in both categories.

About the authors

This blog is written and illustrated by Martijn and Hannah.

Martijn lives and works in Brussel, is a member of beer club Malt and Mout, student organisation BierKultuur, and shareholder — or Equity Punk — of the Scottish craft brewery BrewDog. He is originally from the south of the Netherlands — Limburg — so he was raised with a fondness for the Dutch colonial cuisine (especially Indonesian), licorice and peanut butter. His taste for beer only developed after moving to Belgium, so it wasn’t spoiled by the in those days still uninteresting Dutch beers, and he is now a Certified Cicerone®.
Martijn does most of the writing on this blog.

Hannah was born and raised in West-Flanders, but her Philippine mother acquainted her with the delights of Asian barbecue feasts. She loves a Flanders Red Ale, a beer typical for her birth region, but after meeting Martijn she soon learned to appreciate other beer styles. She’s a Certified Beer Server®.
Hannah designed the “Beers ’n’ Bites in Brussels” logo, and she takes care of most of the photography.

What has Martijn been drinking recently and where?

What has Hannah been drinking recently and where?