We were a bit hesitant to write about JeanBon on our blog: there was only one beer in the fridge, and it wasn’t even a great one… However, the delicious baguettes made more than up for this shortcoming. On the store shelves, there was a choice of better beers available — like a Geuze Boon, or Bertinchamps‘ La Prose — some of which would have paired nicely with our lunch in the windowsill. Could you please put some of those beers in the fridge as well, Jean?
Ixelles
Malting Pot
The Malting Pot has been around for quite a while, and as far as we know, it was the first beer shop in Brussels specialised in foreign beers. After the opening of other shops more conveniently located for us, we neglected Malting Pot a bit, quite unrightfully so! Today still, the small corner shop offers a great selection of foreign beers, without forgetting Belgian breweries like De Ranke and De Dochter van de Korenaar.
Marcel Burger Bar
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
Marcel Burger Bar had been on our list for quite some while — they serve burgers, paired with a specific beer, so what’s not to like? — but we simply hadn’t got around to it. We even passed it a couple of times already — it’s only two houses down from CHEZWaWa, and not that far from BALLEKES either — but on a recent sunny Sunday afternoon — possibly not the best time, if the sound of children is not your favourite music — we finally made it to the burger bar.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh!*
Or: a happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all of you!
The celebrations accompanying this Irish holiday spread all over the world, and have been adopted — or should I say appropriated? — by many not in any way linked to the Emerald Isle. In Brussels it’s no different, and you’ll see Manneken Pis in an Aran jumper, city hall illuminated in green, and loads of — intoxicated — people wearing either a leprechaun hat, or one shaped like pint of Guinness. Of course Guinness is heavily promoting theses celebrations, as if the doubling of consumption of their beers isn’t enough already…
But you can celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day in a more classy way, avoiding the aforementioned stout completely, and visit a couple of bars actually serving Irish craft beer, for the occasion. Eight Degrees Brewing in particular seems to be well represented.
The Black Sheep
There are plenty of bars in Brussels with a foreign touch — or more than just a touch — but only some are truly international. And by that I mean a bar where you can find beers from all over the world, but very local beers as well, and where you can hear the corresponding languages spoken. At The Black Sheep, the Lanterne from the Ixellois brewery L’Ermitage, pouring alongside the IPA from the American brewery in Berlin Stone, illustrates this perfectly.
L’Atelier
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
From the outside, L’Atelier must be one of the most unattractive bars in Brussels, hiding its treasures behind a bland garage door, without any windows to peek into. Too often, for unknown reasons, that garage door even stays closed! If the door is open however, don’t hesitate to go inside, forget about the outside world for a couple of hours, and go treasure hunting in this Aladdin’s cave of beer, in the student district in Ixelles.
Le Murmure
It had been a while since we last visited the Flagey area for a drink, but Le Murmure still looked pretty much the same as last time we were there. And that’s quite quirky, with its copper pipes curling through the space over our heads, and colourful wall paintings. More importantly however, the De la Senne beers were still pouring from its taps, and quite a few gems from Belgium and abroad adorned the bottle list.
Beer Mania
There are many beer stores in Brussels, but only a few make an effort to differentiate themselves from the rest. Beer Mania does so in two different ways: firstly, you can have a cold beer and a meal there, and even quite late. Secondly, they have their own beer, available nowhere else. We had visited Beer Mania already a couple of years ago, but our beer buying interests have since then moved from the mostly Belgian beers on offer there. When they announced a Finnish beer festival however, we saw it as an excellent reason to return.
Contrebande
Usually we know or discover a venue first, and then visit it to find out which beers — and possibly food — they’re serving in that venue. In the case of Contrebande however, it was a Facebook post by brewery L’Ermitage about one of their beers being used in a dish, that put us on the trail of this new bar in Ixelles. It’s a lovely new place, and as we expected, the beer list was rather interesting. So interesting in fact, we initially overlooked one little but important detail: Contrebande is a bar without beer taps…
L’Amère à Boire
When a tasting involving one of the newest Brussels breweries popped up on our Facebook feed, we couldn’t resist and headed to l’Amère à Boire, where the event was about to take place. We had visited this bar in the Flagey area a couple of times before, so we already knew the beer list would certainly warrant an appearance on this blog.