In all the excitement over the upcoming weekend activities, we almost forgot to share all that beery information with you, our thirsty readers. So if you haven’t done so already, quickly clear your schedule for Wanderlust, Brussels Beer Project‘s second anniversary festival, and #Collabfest2017, BrewDog‘s fifth edition of their bars & breweries collaboration festival. Both are starting today — Friday the 20th of October — but Wanderlust will already end with a big party on Saturday evening, while you can still try those brand spanking new #Collabfest2017 beers — since they’re brewed especially for this festival — in BrewDog Brussels on Sunday afternoon!
City of Brussels
À la Bécasse
After a gueuze and lambic filled weekend, we decided to visit a venue best know for its sweet lambic in earthenware jugs: À la Bécasse. The bar is visited by both tourists – a lot of them – and locals, looking for something ‘authentic’ and probably easy to drink. The upper bar room even is quite popular with students, ordering 10 and 20 liter jugs to keep them hydrated during a cantus, a tradition filled evening of singing and – of course – drinking.
Restobières
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!
Don’t miss BXLBeerFest!
There’s only a few days to go until BXLBeerFest will start, probably the biggest craft beer festival that will take place in Belgium this year. Almost 50 breweries from all over the world, are bringing over 300 different beers, bottled, canned and kegged. Add clean glasses for each and every beer, a permanently updated Untappd beer list, half a dozen of food trucks and a pop-up restaurant, and it is bound to be a great success. The only thing there isn’t enough of, is time: two days are just too short to try everything!
Chez Richard
In a fancy area like the one around the Sablon square, one would expect a champagne bar rather than a beer bar. Now, we wouldn’t really call Chez Richard a beer bar, but it did manage to surprise us nevertheless. First of all: they have Jambe-de-Bois on draught. That’s a good start, but not too uncommon anymore nowadays. Noticing BrewDog‘s Punk IPA on the menu made us happy, only to be disappointed when we were told it was temporarily out of stock. The unexpected alternative offered however, made more than up for the discomfort: Cali from Tiny Rebel!
Les Brasseurs
Les Brasseurs is a bar that could easily go under the radar of beer lovers. At least it went under ours, until we discovered their lambic beers, and in particular, the 2-Year Unblended Oude Lambiek by Boon they have available on draught, served in earthenware jugs in different sizes. A note for Untappd geeks like us: some of the bartenders are even quite happy to check which foeder the currently served lambic is from!
Add three beers of the month — one gueuze, one draught, and one bottle — to the mix, and you end up with enough options to keep you tasting — or just enjoying — beers for a while!
Baogo
The newest restaurant to try in the city center is Baogo. We must admit, we had reservations about burgers made with steamed buns, but as it turns out, bao are the perfect vehicle to get all kinds of delicious fillings in your belly! Those fillings are far from limited to the classic burger ingredients: apart from the usual beef, you’ll be able to choose a version with either pulled pork, panko chicken, prawns, panko salmon, or tofu. And did we already mention they have the local beers we all know and love?
Guinguette Royale
After a short dip, the temperature is in the high twenties again, so it’s a perfect opportunity to check out another al fresco drinking establishment. Being centre based, we had to travel quite a distance for our previous visits to park buvettes. Luckily for us, the Guinguette Royale is in the Parc de Bruxelles or Warandepark, the largest public park in the centre of Brussels. Our visit to the buvette in the Bois de la Cambre in mind, we didn’t expect our beers to be served in glass, so we grabbed our reusable cups, and headed to the Parc de Bruxelles for a lunch in the cool shade.
NONA Pizza
Every time a new place is about to open in Brussels, we carefully monitor their posts on social media to see if there’s any mention of beer, and sometimes we even just ask which beers they will be serving. NONA didn’t need our encouragement, and one of their photos already showed a tasting of De Ranke beers, to serve in their new Neapolitan pizza restaurant. As it turns out, NONA even has two of their beers on draught! Consequently, we were pretty excited about the place, even before we had tried their pizzas.
Chez Bobonne
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
“Restaurant – Shop – Bar – Brewery” it says in the logo of Chez Bobonne, and at first I thought that last word was just a wrong translation of the French word ‘brasserie‘, the type of restaurant. But lo and behold: on one of their Facebook photos, there was a real — albeit small — brewing installation! Not only that, but they displayed a great love for beer as well, and even before the official opening, we could see a couple of bottles of Dochter van de Korenaar pictured. A visit was inevitable…