The Kiekenmarkt or Rue du Marché aux Poulets received a makeover in 2012, making it car-free and therefore much more attractive for everyone, but businesses in the food and drink industry in particular. Sure, Corica en Celtica fared quite well already, when there was only a three tile wide pavement in front of their doors, but the street’s renaissance attracted some new entrepreneurs as well. We already told the success story of Bia Mara, but a couple of doors up the street, Peck 47 has become a food and drink hot spot as well!
bar
Café Bizon
Café Bizon was one of the very first bars in the centre of Brussels I frequented, even before I lived there. The reasons were simple: great — often live — blues music, cool and quirky interior, multilingual staff, and Guinness on draught. Even then I didn’t like lager, so the stout was a welcome alternative, and so the Guinness was my drink of choice. It’s still there — always served with the Irish shamrock drawn in the foam — but the beer list is actually a lot more interesting than that!
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.
Excelsior
Most of the places we’ve discussed so far, are found in the same areas: Brussels centre, Saint-Gilles, Ixelles, Schaerbeek. A little while ago we were involved in a little Twitter conversation about the lack of decent beer places west of the canal. We had to admit, apart from some breweries, we only knew of one: Excelsior, in Jette. But this bar could easily fool you with its huge Jupiler and Maes branding on the outside, and even inside, the only visible pump clip is once again on of those commercial pilsners. But once you peek into the fridges, things get a whole lot more interesting…
The Hairy Canary
“Victorian pub” it says on the terrace screen outside The Hairy Canary, and that is exactly what it looks like when you enter. The Hairy Canary is the kind op bar where you would expect the bartender to fill your pint glass, slowly pulling cask ale through a beer engine. Unfortunately — or maybe not? — you’ll rarely find English cask ales on this side of the Channel. For those of you still curious about more traditional English ales, they do serve a couple of those in bottles.
La Tana
Update: La Tana has move across the street, to Rue de l'Enseignement 27, and beer shop La Tana 2.0 has moved to the same location. [venue id= 5e27564fa292720008bc3b61]
When visiting Rome a couple of years ago, there was only one beer bar to be found in the eternal city, and just a few interesting breweries in the whole of Italy. Much has changed since then, and many Italian beers now equal or surpass our Belgian brews. However, it is still quite rare to see an Italian restaurant serving those beers. Luckily for us, in 2014 two Romans — chef Valerio and his brother — opened a tiny place called La Tana, where they serve great pastas, and beers to match.
Hoppy Loft
UPDATE: Is just a part of the Delirium bar now, and doesn’t serve anything special anymore…
We had selected the Hoppy Loft for a blog post before, but that night they only had almost nothing but Huyghe beers on draught, and once you’ve tried their Delirium beers, you’ve had their best already. So we quickly left again, to visit an other place to write about for that week.
Lesson learnt: don’t go to the Hoppy Loft, unless they’ve announced something interesting on their Facebook page.
Luckily, last week they posted something about some beers from La Débauche, a French brewer until that moment unknown to us. Knowing there would al least a couple of new beers to try, we headed back to the dreaded Delirium Village…
ViaVia Traveler’s Café
UPDATE: Moved to the other side of the Vismet and got a new name: Au Bassin
ViaVia Traveler’s Café is not new, but its current location is. And what a difference it makes! We had visited ViaVia quite a few times before at its old location, and then it already was a very pleasant place, with a nice covered courtyard, and on sunny days a terrace on the sidewalk as well. But now, in addition to a courtyard — open this time — there are two more covered terraces. the barroom itself is a lot bigger than the old one as well.
When it comes to the beers and bites bit, it seems not much has changed so far: the menu is the same as before, or at least very similar.
1030 Café
Schaerbeek is becoming more and more interesting for beer lovers: last Saturday 1030 Café opened its doors, and more importantly, its taps! Behind those taps you’ll find the brothers Guillaume and Max.
We met with and talked to Guillaume before, when he was still working as a bartender at another bar in Brussels, so we already knew he was passionate about beer, and we couldn’t wait to see his and his brother’s bar!