Pistolet Original - Beers 'n' Bites in Brussels

Having a beer with your lunch — even on a normal work day — isn’t uncommon in Belgium, but finding high quality beer in a sandwich place, is. At Pistolet Original they’re not only serving some of the best Brussels beers to drink with your ‘pistolet’, they even use our beloved Cantillon gueuze as an ingredient for their latest creation, the Zenne Pistolet Cantillon!

Since Pistolet Original is only open until four o’clock on most days, you would only come here for lunch, or to satisfy your mid-afternoon cravings. In our case, these cravings often include beer as well, and then we are in the right spot here: Cantillon gueuze, De la Senne Taras Boulba and a couple of beers brewed by Brasserie à la Ferme de Bertinchamps, from Namur.

We have seen special labels for De la Senne‘s beers before — at Bia Mara and Monk, for instance — but in those cases it was always their Zinnebir. At Pistolet Original the Taras Boulba received the Govaerts make-over this time. Untappd allows separate entries for these special labels, and even though the Taras Boulba Pistolet is exactly the same beer as the normal Taras Boulba, it’s rated slightly higher than the original. Maybe the beer just pairs extremely well with the pistolets?

Speaking of this eponymous ‘pistolet’, the soft but crispy bread roll with the slit down the middle: there are so many ways to have it here, far beyond just ham or cheese. As they describe it on their website:

“Pistolet Original offers a huge choice of fillings or are served with typical cold and hot belgian products like home-made steak tartare, salted pork hash with pickles, grey shrimps, cream cheese with radish and onions, gouda cheese with chicory and green salad, grey shrimp croquettes, sausage meat balls with mayonaise, “boudin de Liège”, or more specialities as Bloempanch (blood pudding), kipkap (a kind of headcheese), potjesvlees (Flemish meat terrine) and Herve cheese (the only Belgian AOC cheese).”

As you can see, plenty of choice, and that doesn’t even include the ever-changing suggestions, and the guest chef’s special.

The headline-grabbing chef’s special this time, and the main reason for our visit, is the Zenne Pistolet Cantillon, a recipe of Les Brigittines chef Dirk Myny, The usual pistolet is filled with cabbage cooked in Cantillon gueuze, lightly smoked dry sausage, and mild blood sausage. To complete the experience, you’re even served a taster of the gueuze with your order of Zenne Pistolet Cantillon. A roll can’t get more Brussels than this! And although it is quite hard to taste the gueuze in the cabbage if you’re drinking gueuze at the same time, it is a very tasty pistolet nevertheless.

Pistolet Original isn’t just a lunch place, but a little grocery store as wel, where you can of course buy a few beers to go, and some other Belgian gourmet products. So if you like what you found between your pistolet, you might even be able to buy some of it to use at home. That could be useful, since Pistolet Original doesn’t open early enough for breakfast. You might want to skip the beer at breakfast, though, at least on weekdays…