Eating & Drinking Our Way Through Belgium

When I say Belgium, what do you think of? No, not surrendering to the German's after a few days, not being the EU capital and not Hercule Poirot. Though those are all valid, we are not celebrating those, we are celebrating the beer and the multitude carb-loaded foods.

Way back in the planning stage of this trip, I asked the W's where they would like to go, other then Paris. Without too much thought DW, better known as CF around here, quickly said Belgium. I thought that was a great idea and only latter did I realized that his mind was already scheming. He had heard a lot about the beer culture here and following our pilgrimage to stout beers holy land last year, knew that this would be the place for us. CF studied long and hard on the topic and came up with his manifesto. He went even further and found the best bars for us to go to enjoy this multitude of brewed goodness. We started off with a bang at a bar, Delirium, in Brussels that carries near 2000 beers. We tried our small share. We also toured the only brewery still brewing in Brussels. This remarkable little brewery, Cantillon, does things the old fashioned way and makes a great beer called gueuze, that is quite sour and much to KZ's liking. In Gent we found the Waterhuis aan de Bierkant, a quaint, cozy place on the river through town with a nice selection of beers. Next door, was Dreupelkot, a genever (gin) cafe, yes this place was all gin. Genever is made from grain and they love to add flavors to it. The grumpy gentlemen running the bar had been there for 35 years and made his own mixes. We tried tiramisu, vanilla, pepper and anise. Here in Bruges, we didn't have quite the number of bars to go to that DW researched but we did go on another brewery tour. The De Halve Mann brewery, or Half Moon, is the last one in Bruges. There just isn't room in these old city centers to have a huge brewery and the trucks for delivery can't maneuver. We dropped in for drinks at a bar/hotel/restaurant called Erasmus, which actually had a bunch of beers on tap. It is unusual to see beers on tap here since bottle conditioning is a how most of these beers get their distinct flavors. Not only do they mostly come in bottles but every beer has its own glass, the style determined by the type of beer. Erasmus was such a great stop that we made reservations for dinner the next night. The last great beer spot we went to was t'Beertje Brugge. It was off one of the main streets and had 200+ beers to drink. When we arrived the place was packed and we had to split up to a couple of tables. We think we were in the touristy room but it was a pretty cool place anyway. Well those were the highlights, drinking your way through Belgium is definitely a good idea during the fall, so you have an excuse to get out of the rain.

As far as food, it is very simple...fries, waffles and chocolate. We had quite a bit of it too. The fries come with everything or can be bought at street vendors, which usually are the best. Waffles are sold as street food with chocolate, whipped cream or plain and not as breakfast food. Chocolate shops are everywhere and in all kinds of flavors. They are so much better then what you find in the US. Of course, it is hard to find a chocolate shop in the US. We actually had some very good real food too. Moules Frites was a big hit.

We enjoyed Belgium but I am so excited to be moving on to Paris.

Thanks for reading.