At first glance, MangiaSempre is a shop, or more specifically, an Italian ‘bottega’. The shelves and fridge counter are stacked with high quality products, everything you need to cook up an Italian meal at home, and yes, even some beers.
But then you’ll notice the beer taps and the menu with the daily specials and sandwiches, and you’ll quickly realise MangiaSempre is so much more than just a shop! Although the terrace with Brasserie de la Mule parasols probably was a bit of a giveaway already…
UPDATE: La Tana has moved across the street, and the bottle shop has now moved into that space as well, so there are no longer two different locations.
Valerio’s love for beer was already obvious in La Tana 1.0, where the mostly Italian and Belgian beers served alongside the pastas and other Italian dishes, were a more than worthy accompaniment. To do a bit more with that passion for beer, he opened La Tana 2.0 just a couple of houses up the same street as the restaurant: a beer shop, where you can sit down—even on a small terrace, when the weather permits—and enjoy a cold one as well!
Pizza and beer, it still is a great combination! Most pizza places, however, offer little more than a commercial lager, and certainly no draught options. At La Bottega della Pizza Sablon, there’s at least the reassuring presence of a couple of De la Senne beers on draught, alongside Dupont‘s organic saison Biolégère, to go with the wide selection of Neapolitan pizzas.
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!
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.
A food truck festival is already a lot of foodie fun — albeit often quite expensive — but the addition of some decent beer makes such a festival the perfect weekend activity. The Brussels edition is lucky enough to welcome the Birrabus once again. Even in the obligatory reusable plastic cups, the Italian beer pouring from the taps on the side of a schoolbus, still tastes delicious.
So if you’re going to the Brussels Food Truck Festival this weekend, don’t hesitate to take a moment to sit in one of the school benches in front of the Birrabus, and try a couple of the 18 different beers from Hammer, Lambrate, CANEDIGUERRA, BrewFist or Birranova.
The beer festival season has started again, and this year sees the launch of yet another festival, but one we’re particularly excited about: the BXL BeerFest! The beer festival is still a couple of months away — the 26th and 27th of August 2017 at Tour & Taxis — but tickets are already available now!
We’ve already taken you to a real Italian restaurant with this blog, but so far, we hadn’t yet mentioned the Italian fast food par excellence: pizza. There are dozens of pizza places in Brussels, but as often is the case with fast food places, serving good beer is rarely a priority there. A happy exception to this rule is Saco Pizza Bar, serving both great pizzas, and an excellent selection of Belgian beers.
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.