The land of chocolate

Belgium! Doesn’t the word just conjure thoughts of Hercule Poirot or Angelina Jolie solving dangerous exotic mysteries among its many villainous characters and breath taking scenery? Oh, wait, that’s Istanbul. I guess the word “Brussels” tends to inspire more the European-farm-subsidy-committee community than Hollywood.

Yes, I was in Brussels for a lovely 36 hour jaunt. To my surprise Belgian cuisine has evolved since the last time I studied it: the cuisine of world war one. No machine gunning horses or drinking from the skulls of decapitated German teenagers here! The food in Brussels was, without exception, delicious.

Brussels really doesn’t have a whole lot to see, except for some nice architecture, the Grand Place and spectacular carved wood pulpit at the church of Saint Michel and Gudule (note to self, name one of my children Gudule). But the food! We started the day by going to a very good sandwich place, where I had a portugese tuna salad (loaded with olives, tomatoes and pickles) with buffalo mozzerrella on a fresh baguette (very E.U). After walking around for a while and checking out some very cool Belgian clothing stores, we had classic French fries with mayonaisse. The fries were good but the mayo was excellent; creamy with roasted garlic, almost good enough to make you forget you were eating straight mayo (don’t worry, I have sent you all some in the mail!).

For dinner we went to a tapas restaurant. Why did I go to a tapas restaurant in Brussels and not some place that serves chocolate covered mussels or something else terribly Belgian? Because I am a sucker for a food gimmic. Like some sushi restaurants in the U.S and the U.K, this restaurant served its tapas on a conveyor belt. Colored coded (indicating whether the dish was “porky”, “garlicky”, “fishy”, “desserty”, etc-y) individually sized plates would rotate past, which was great at first but once you reached your sixth and final individual plate it became an intense game of strategy to figure out which pork dish would finish the meal. The tapas was fine, nothing terribly special, but the place was fun and would be a good place to take an easily distractible person you don’t have anything to talk about with on a date. We then got Belgian beer, but the one I had was terrible. I know I said everything was good, but, well, technically it was just all the food that was good. The charming “L word” looking bartendress advised me to get this beer that was to my surprise Robatussin flavored. Okay maybe it was cherry but I would have rather chugged a bottle of cough medicine and hallucinated than drink that saccharine beer.

The next day we went to a beautiful Art Nouveau café called “Le Perroquet” for brunch. I had a pita with grilled chicken, honey, yogurt, sprouts and raw vegetables that was exactly what all brunch food should be: sweet, creamy and satisfying (the fact that the bill for the three of us came to like 14 euros for three pitas and three espressos was also great). So then, of course, we went and bought some chocolate. Chocolate shopping in Brussels is somewhat like shopping for clothing in the rest of the world: the high end stuff with icy beautiful sales women, the low end stuff, hell I think there was even an H&M chocolate store (this is Europe you know). So I bought some chocolates at the Neuhaus store, a Belgian favorite, and tried to forget King Leopold’s Ghost. Thankfully the chocolate was so good I didn’t even feel any post-colonial guilt. You hear that Vassar’s English/Poli Sci/Sociology/Film/Women’s Studies/Physical Education department??

All in all I ate way better in the 36 hours I was in Brussels than the 5 days in Prague, Vienna and Bratislava. So from now on whenever anyone calls Brussels boring, I am going to defend the Belgians, because, well, they don’t exactly have the greatest history of defending themselves…