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!
A lot of universities and university colleges opened their doors to students again this or last week. One of these university colleges is the Erasmushogeschool Brussel, and their Arts department “Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound” has its own bar: RITCS CAFE. It’s not run by students — as often is the case for student bars in Leuven for instance — but very professionally, by beer lover Steven. Within the restrains of a space used as a college cafetaria at noon, he manages to make RITCS CAFE a place where both lager guzzling students and more discerning adult beer drinkers feel welcome in the evening.
Every now and then, you’ll find an organic beer on the beer list of a bar. Often by coincidence, because some good beers just happen to be organic, sometimes it is a deliberate choice to offer some organic options for the more environmentally and health conscious customer. At The Sister however, the menu almost exclusively lists organic dishes, beers and other drinks. Almost, since four of the five draught beers are InBev beers, which couldn’t be less organic or even craft. No need to drink them though, there are plenty of tasty beers on the organic list!
Beer gardens are not a very Belgian thing, and to my knowledge, in Brussels there are no real ones, the kind with large communal tables under the trees. So where to go then, if you want the luxury of proper seating and freshly poured glasses of beer — instead of bringing a growler and a blanket to a park — but you’d still like to sit in the shadow of trees, instead of that of parasols and buildings, and with a better view — and smell — than just cars? Our recommendation is Buvette Sint-Sebastiaan, in the Parc Josaphat.
You even get to see archers shoot at ‘birds’!
It surely was beery last weekend, and we hope you had the opportunity to visit one or more of the beer festivals. One of the smaller festivals — if you can even consider it a beer festival instead of just a themed weekend — was the Italian Beer Weekend at Moeder Lambic Fontainas. It’s the kind of weekend they organize on a regular basis, featuring a different country every time. But the bar is well worth visiting on normal days as well!
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
Since the gourmet burger trend started, loads of burger places appeared in Brussels, trying to get their piece of the pie. You can now find burgers in all price ranges, and the ones at Cool Bun are certainly in the higher range. In this case however, that is completely justified! The burgers are grilled to perfection — some places just don’t seem to understand ‘medium’ — with the finest, organic ingredients, and they even have some American craft beers to go with this pinnacle of American cuisine.
“Churchill’s – The English Pub” is the name of this week’s bar. Well, the draught beers are Belgian and Irish, and the only dish they serve is American. But if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to taste some fine English beers — although only bottled — while you leisurely watch a game of cricket on one of the many tv screens.
No such luck during our visit, however: the best British ales available were Scottish, and there was only football and boxing on the screens.
It’s not very likely we will ever again feature a bar where the eight “draft beers” on the menu are actually just the 25 cl and 50 cl version of each of their InBev pilsners, a mazout (pilsner with coke), and three sous-marins with different jenevers… The Booze’n Blues however, has a trick up its sleeve: about every currently available beer of Brasserie de la Senne! The jukebox is nice too, of course.
Never not enough. That is the literal translation of the peculiar name this restaurant goes by: Nüetnigenough. Don’t let the double negation fool you though: it is a Brussels word for a greedy glutton. Nüetnigenough is not an all-you-can-eat restaurant however, but it offers a fine selection of mostly very Belgian, often beer infused dishes, and more importantly, an even finer selection of Belgian beers.
After a week amidst the midges in the country of kilts and bagpipes, we’re back in Brussels to introduce you to some more local drinking holes!
Still in the tourist mindset, we went to the Poechenellekelder, right across our famous Manneken Pis. But even though the terrace and tables inside might be filled with tourist just thirsty after photographing a statue of a peeing boy, this venue actually does have something to offer for the real beer lover as well!