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?
De la Senne
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.
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.
Swafff! Brussels Craft Beer Fffestival 2017
It looks like it will be a great beer festival summer in Brussels this year, and it already kicks off this weekend with Swafff! Brussels Craft Beer Fffestival. On both Saturday the 24th and Sunday the 25th of June, more than 30 Belgian and foreign breweries will serve us their best beers in Les Ecuries van de Tram.
Woodpecker
It’s almost summer, and in the past month, we even had a little heatwave already. A shaded terrace in front of a bar can be a nice spot when that happens, but it’s even better to get away from all that heat retaining brick and concrete, and find some shade under the trees in one of the many public parks of Brussels. In more and more parks, we now see buvettes (re)opening, serving cool drinks on those hot days. In the park of Bois de la Cambre, it’s the team of Woodpecker that keeps us hydrated, serving pints of Zinnebir and Jambe-de-Bois.
Copain
In Schaerbeek, the bar scene is moving at a very high pace, and just a couple of weeks ago, yet another bar opened in this northern municipality: Copain. It’s just two blocks down from 1030 Café, so the area is actually becoming quite interesting for bar hoppers who’d like to drink something else than just cheap lager or one of those abbey ales that are a dime a dozen. The subtitle “Beer, Wine & Friends” sums up the bar quite nicely: a place to enjoy quality drinks, in nice, sometimes very cosy, surroundings.
Chill’b
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
Sometimes a lot of time goes in deciding which bar or restaurant to choose to feature next on our blog, going over our list of potential venues over and over again, trying to find something that fits our mood and the available time. And sometimes you just stumble upon a candidate when going out for an easy dinner in a recently opened burger bar. As it turns out, Chill’b perfectly fits the conditions to feature on here: is a place where you can have a nice meal, and — quite unexpectedly — with a good beer.
Les 3 Frères
UPDATE: Closed permanently…
It must be that the love for good beer — made with an equal amount of love — is infectious, since once again, we find ourselves in Saint-Gilles, at only a few hundred meters from ‘patient zero’, Moeder Lambic. At Les 3 Frères (the three brothers) this love for beer — especially for those made by De la Senne and Tartaruga — comes with a love for food as well, serving dishes ranging from a simple soup or croque monsieur, to tagliatelle with asparagus, courgettes and artichokes, and perfectly cooked steak.
Café Maison du Peuple
We should have known better than to come to a big bar on the liveliest square of Saint-Gilles on a Friday evening… But we just tried to ignore the plastic cups, loud music and ID-less bouncers, and focussed on the surprisingly rich beer menu of Café Maison du Peuple instead. We didn’t just discover beers from De la Senne, Brussels Beer Project and Beerstorming from — very — nearby, but even bottles and cans from Stone, BrewDog and The Kernel from abroad!
Théâtre Royal de Toone
A puppet theatre wouldn’t be the first place you’d look for a nice beer, would it? But hidden away at the end of a narrow alley, the estaminet attached to Théâtre Royal de Toone is serving beers from Oud Beersel and Boon on draught, and a few more interesting beers on bottle! Even though we’ve been at Toone a couple of times already, so far, we have never seen a show. But if you’re interested, there are plenty of puppets hanging around — literally — to get an idea of what you can expect ‘on stage’, three nights a week.