Restobières - Beers 'n' Bites in Brussels

UPDATE: Closed permanently…

When it comes to beer and food, you can’t look past Restobières. Their Belgian dishes, often using beer as an ingredient, combined with beers from mostly smaller breweries — no InBev here — makes the restaurant a must-visit on the list of many beer tourists coming to Brussels. But even though many of the customers here are tourists — I think we were the only locals during our visit — the quality of the food and beers here is much higher than in the Rue des Bouchers!

At first glance the beer menu was as classic as a lot of the Belgian dishes served at Restobières: a small selection of beers of spontaneous fermentation — Boon, Cantillon, Girardin and Lindemans — a couple of trappist beers, and a selection of beers by Dupont, De Ranke, Les Rulles and some other, mostly smaller, Belgian breweries. One beer you won’t find anywhere else, is the ForMi Diable, a beer brewed by Van Eecke — the only large brewery on the menu — especially for Restobières.

The lack of ‘new’ Belgian breweries on the beer menu is more than made up for by the page of beer suggestions one receives together with the standard menu. The current list features, for instance, Damme Nation and Cassandra, two beers by the West-Flemish newcomer Siphon Brewing.

You won’t just find beer in your glass at Restobières, but in your plate as well: plenty of dishes available here use beer as an ingredient!

The number of dishes is quite overwhelming, but a couple of set menus — one for € 22, one for € 28, one for € 35, and one for € 42 — make it seem a bit easier. “Seem”, because each menu isn’t quite ‘set’ at all, and there are a couple of different options for each course. You can even replace some of the menu items with dishes from the suggestions list! At least it gives you an easy starting point, and you’ll get to try a dessert you might otherwise have skipped.

The stoemp portions on our plates might look a bit on the small side, but we can assure you, that is mostly because of the oversized pieces of meat. So don’t worry, all elements considered, you’ll have more than enough food on your plate to satisfy you.

Even on a Tuesday night, it can get quite busy, apparently, so we advise to book ahead if you intend to dine at Restobières. We didn’t have a reservation, and they really had to see if they would be able to fit us in. And sure enough, by the time we left, there wasn’t an empty seat left in the house!