Wiel's Renard Noir - Beers 'n' Bites in Brussels

The Marolles… A wonderful part of Brussels, mixing old and new, craft and commercial, and this goes both for the beers and the furniture and other objects sold in this part of town. Wiel’s Renard Noir — in the middle of d’Huugstroet (High Street) — is very much in touch with its past, with its old photos, paintings, and relief tiles with religious scenes, while serving twenty-first century ales to young hipsters and old geezers alike.

If you’re reading our blog, you’ll probably want to skip the beers on draught at Wiel’s Renard Noir all together — only the holy trinity of InBev there: Jupiler, Hoegaarden and Leffe — and just skip to the much better Bières en Suggestion du Renard Noir section on the menu, with De la Senne beers, Brasserie des Légendes and Dupont.

There actually is a Beer of the Month available, but during our visit it was just another InBev beer: Leffe de Noël. Their Untappd feed didn’t show any other beers not on the menu already, sit this might be a recent thing, and we hope their choices for the next months will be a bit more adventurous.

The food options fill several pages in the menu: different croque monsieurs, sandwiches, salads, omelets, quiches, and all the usual bar snacks. Check the blackboard for the Dish of the Day. Well, it doesn’t actually change every day, but often enough to have something different every time you visit, and it’s homemade.

We had one of the quiches — spinach and goat cheese — and the Dish of that particular Day: chili con carne with rice. It was exactly what you hope for in a place like that: tasty, no-frills home cooking. If you’re a big eater and you’re having the quiche, you might want to have a soup first, or a dessert afterwards, since there aren’t really any side dishes on the menu. Unless you’re just saving some room for a portion mixte later, of course!

It was rather calm during our visit, but on most Saturday evenings there is live music at Wiel’s Renard Noir, just check their Facebook page to find out who’s playing.

When the bartender caught us taking photos — try doing that inconspicuously in a smallish bar on a calm night — she happily told us everything there was to know about the photos and paintings that grabbed our attention. So now we know the bar was where Brouwerij Wielemans-Ceuppens originally started, before moving to another location. It then became a bar, but still using the name Wiel’s, like the beer they used to brew until 1988.