Beers

Places where you can go for a beer, without the need — or option — of ordering a meal.

La Tana 2.0

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UPDATE: La Tana has moved across the street, and the bottle shop has now moved into that space as well, so there are no longer two different locations.

Valerio’s love for beer was already obvious in La Tana 1.0, where the mostly Italian and Belgian beers served alongside the pastas and other Italian dishes, were a more than worthy accompaniment. To do a bit more with that passion for beer, he opened La Tana 2.0 just a couple of houses up the same street as the restaurant: a beer shop, where you can sit down—even on a small terrace, when the weather permits—and enjoy a cold one as well!

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Python

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It’s been a while since we had an excuse to visit Schaerbeek to report on a new beery destination, but the Python Beer Cellar finally lured us back to the city of donkeys!

The modern looking bar—but with just a touch of curly nostalgia—is quite a walk away from the other beer bars in Schaarbeek, therefore serving a completely different herd of customers, who can—and should—make this bar their own. 

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Les Fleurs du Malt

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We’ve sat outside a couple of beer shops enjoying a freshly bought fresh beer before, but there are only few beer shops that actually encourage this. Luckily, Les Fleurs du Malt does—at least in summer—and it has set up a nice little terrace on the square in front of the store. This was an excellent opportunity for us to spend a bit more time on the metro to get to Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, as it turns out, for the first time for this blog. 

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Bar Eliza

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UPDATE: Closed permanently…

We’ve discussed a couple of buvettes and guingettes in parks before, but the hot and sunny weather forces us to drink outside again… Not that we mind! This time, we visited Bar Eliza in the Elisabethpark,  a bar quite unlike the other park bars we visited so far. For starters, Eliza isn’t exactly in it for the money, but it’s ran by a couple of local foundations, of which you might already recognise community centers De Platoo and De Zeyp as organisers of the Plazey festival.

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CHAFF

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UPDATE: After being closed for a while, it reopened under new management. We have revisited it since, and it seems mostly unchanged.

Once again, we found ourselves in the Marolles, right next to the location of the famous flea market, this time at CHAFF. While the band was getting ready to play later on that evening, we picked a table on the first floor to have a couple of local beers—almost every brewery in Brussels was represented with at least one beer—and something to eat. Despite the large choice of rather healthy looking dishes, we decided to go for the burgers.

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Kumiko

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UPDATE: Closed permanently…

We’ve had ramen and gyoza before, but we had no clue what donburi, kara age, or onigiri were, when we first read it on the menu of Kumiko. Although the food menu is definitely Japanese, you can’t simply call the place a Japanese restaurant: there is a cellar bar more suitable for drinking than eating, and a nice courtyard terrace. There is some Japanese macro beer available, with the brewery in the same block, a Brussels Beer Project beer would be the obvious choice here, unless the CraftWorks beer tickles your fancy more.

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Les Brassins

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With a name like Les Brassins (The Brews), we had to visit this restaurant in Ixelles. An old sign against the wall facing the entrance promised us lambic by the pitcher, but unfortunately that was all it was: an old sign, amidst many other old beer commercials, not quite representative of the current beer offer… Luckily there were some other beers available — even some from the newest generation of Brussels breweries — and a baker’s dozen of meat dishes to choose from, some fish dishes, salads and pastas.

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Dekkera

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Dekkera, “la bièrerie du quartier Wiels“, is the first venue in Forest appearing on our blog. The reason for this is simple: in Forest, Dekkera probably is the first and only beer bar — and shop — not serving and selling ‘big beer’, but exclusively local and other Belgian craft beer. Of course, that that is exactly what we like to see!

 

 

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BrewDog Brussels

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Most beer lovers familiar with foreign beers, already know BrewDog, or at least have heard of it. The sometimes controversial Scottish brewery doesn’t only brew beer, it also runs a few dozen bars. Already quite a while ago, BrewDog Brussels opened right next to Central Station, but a recent change is finally turning it into the beer geek mecca it should have been from the start. The hoppy beers BrewDog is known for, are now fresher than ever, the Buffalo wings hotter than ever, and the staff is more passionate than ever. If you haven’t done so recently, now is the time to (re)visit BrewDog Brussels!

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GIST

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It only opened a couple of weeks ago, but GIST seems to be well on its way to be a prime spot in the Brussels beer landscape. Not only are there sixteen normal draught taps to pour just as many different beer styles at any given time, but two beautiful beer engines for cask ales as well. We’ve seen similar beer engines in Brussels to dispense lambic beers, but as far as we know, this would be the only place where they will actually be used to pour British (style) ales! And that in a city that actually has a couple of British pubs…

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