THE SKIES were grey and rain came pelting down on Brussels, sweeping the Grand Place, the city's wonderful theatre set of a town centre. What better excuse for hunkering down over a two-to-three-hour lunch? This, our first morning in Brussels, was the perfect day to try what all the Belgian guidebooks say is a staple of the local diet: beer, mussels and frites.
I don't want to diminish the importance of Brussels' history, which is splendid for such a small country, but the Belgian capital is a city where food really should dominate your daily itinerary. Entire streets in some neighborhoods are devoted to nothing but cafes, restaurants and ice cream shops. And who else would have come up with fietkots - small street stands that sell nothing but French fries.
It was down one of the eat streets that we headed - the Petite Rue des Bouchers, a narrow pedestrian passageway running off the Grand Place. Lined on both sides the entire length of the block was one inviting restaurant after another offering complete, fixed-priced dinner menus for what in Europe amounts to bargain basement prices. Which to choose? There's not a lot in it, actually. Many of the cafes dish up similar menus so we stuck to the old tourist trick of picking the most crowded one. We plumped for Le Mouton d'Or, mostly because it had a cosy fire in the back and we could see heaps of dark mussel shells on many of the tables.
First-rate beer is one of Belgium's national treasures, and we were quickly served two towering glasses. The waiter had told us to leave everything to him and it turned out to be a wise move. Hoppy and flavourful, we couldn't have made a better decision ourselves. I ordered mussels with white wine sauce, and my colleague chose a variation with tomatoes, peppers and onions so we could cherry-pick each other's plates
A lunch of beer, mussels and frites isn't exactly gourmet fare, but I believe the test of a good chef is how well he manages his ordinary dishes from steaks to omelets. The kitchen at Le Mouton d'Or came up trumps. Our mussels arrived in good time, served up in two huge black kettles, each pot large enough to simmer a week's worth of soup. They must have contained four or five dozen mussels apiece - I stopped counting the shells after the first three dozen or so - all floating in a sauce rich with fresh vegetables and herbs. A platter of frites - the slender french fries that the Belgians will tell you they almost invented - followed immediately. With mayonnaise, of course.
Despite its culinary expertise, Brussels often is ignored by Australian tourists, perhaps because it is viewed as a modern city of commerce and the bastion of EU bureacracy. In fact Brussels now calls itself a zenneke (Flemish for mongrel) city because, like in so many of the world's cities, immigrants outnumber locals in many sectors. Most European capitals celebrate their castles and cathedrals. Brussels has these in spades, too, but most of all its citizens cherish the saucy little statue called Mannekin Pis, depicting a chubby boy urinating naked into a fountain. It's a whimsical piece, dating back to the 14th century, that reflects an underlying spirit of good times and serves as a reminder that the Belgian national drink has always been beer.
Third on my list of major reasons to visit Brussels is chocolates. Belgium is the world capital of fine, hand-made chocolates, and there is hardly a block in the centre of the city that doesn't have one or two chocolatiers ready to sell you a single piece or a boxful. Every cup of coffee you order in Belgium is accompanied by an exquisitely wrapped chocolate, too. So in a bid to limit the amount of kilojoules you consume, a good idea is to treat chocolates as a dessert, stopping in a different shop after each meal to sample just one or two creamy truffles and maybe a nut cluster. My favorite shop is Wittamer in the Place du Grand Sablon, a charming old neighborhood a short walk south from the Grand Place. Wittamer, in fact, is two shops a few doors from each other; one sells chocolates and the other is a gleamingly elegant patisserie, offering luscious pastries and amazing ice cream creations.
Between meals, we did manage a substantial amount of sightseeing, almost all of it on foot. Brussels, like many European capitals, is a good walking city. Every day we began at the Grand Place, or Grote Markt as the Flemish-speaking Belgians call it. Ringed with footpath cafes, it rivals the most beautiful plazas or squares anywhere in Europe. A colorful extravaganza of fanciful statuary, ornate columns and gold leaf facades, it is a delicious, entertaining feast for the eyes no matter how many times you have seen it.
The dominant structures on the square are the Gothic town hall with its slender, soaring belfry and the similarly Gothic Municipal Museum, which faces it from the other side of the square. Between them are the three- and four-storey baroque townhouses of the former guilds - the cabinet-makers, the archers, the brewers, the butchers, the tanners, the millers. Today several house cafes. Only the Maison des Brasseurs serves its original purpose as an office for an association of brewers. A brewery museum, offering a sample of Belgium's best, is located in the vaulted cellar. "Beer is a wholesome beverage born of the sap of the harvest," a recorded message informed us. No argument there.
On that first rainy day in Brussels, we did not stray far from the Grand Place. At mid-morning, after a tour of the Municipal Museum, we snacked on apple and apricot tarts at La Chaloupe d'Or, once the house of the tailors and now a bustling coffeehouse and beer pub. Then we crossed the square for a visit to the beer museum, where we were offered a complimentary glass of ‘white' beer, so called because the yeast is not filtered from it.
One of the favorite restaurants in our three-day stay was the charming and inexpensive Aux Armes de Bruxelles, also located on Petite Rue des Bouchers. It was crowded and noisy, the kind of old-style dining room where the waiters know most of the patrons and almost everyone sits elbow-to-elbow at long, communal tables for eight. The congenial banter between waiters and local patrons totally contradicted a guidebook warning that the Petite Rue des Bouchers caters only to tourists.
The food was as good as the room was colorful and completely devoid of any nods to modern cuisine, which suited us just fine. I ordered a boneless chicken breast in an orange sauce, a dish that for such a traditional venue came rather fancily arranged in alternate orange and chicken slices. It was accompanied by potatoes Normandie, which looked like small crusty marshmallows, and a mixed salad. Belgian farmers, like their Dutch counterparts to the north, are noted for the extremely high quality of their fruits and vegetables, so the greens were just-picked fresh. I ended the meal with a delicious praline souffle and coffee. And, of course, a large, luscious chocolate to go with it.
If you want to spend some real money on dining well, however, the top restaurant names you need to know are: Belga Queen, a huge brasserie in a converted Belle Epoque bank; Bla Bla & Gallery, which is permanently full of young trendies; Mundo Pain, which sounds like an S&M porn movie but is the current ‘scene' restaurant in town; and La Quincaillerie, still the city's top corporate dinner venue. For a rundown on some of Brussels' best bars, from Archiduc, the coolest in town, to Mappo Mundo, a multi-level drinking den, visit <www.worldsbestbars.com>
Between meals, we walked extensively, seeking what proved to be a quite rewarding selection of cultural and historical attractions to satisfy our minds as our stomachs had been gratified. Obvious early sightseeing choices were the adjacent museums of Ancient Art (through the 18th century) and Modern Art, both on Place Royale across the square from the Royal Palace, about a kilometre south of the Grand Place. My special interest was the small collection of works in the Museum of Ancient Art by 16th century painter Pieter Brueghel, who lived in Brussels and is buried in the city. With an innovative genius, Brueghel captured the everyday life of his time in such extraordinary works as Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap, which depicts young ice skaters on a village pond. Will the trap snare them instead? It is an alarming painting if you think about it for too long. .
The Place du Grand Sablon is south of the Grand Place in a neighborhood well worth spending some time exploring. Architecturally, it is mostly of pre-19th century origins, and it is one of Brussels' finest residential and shopping areas. Many of the city's most expensive restaurants are here and there is also a large number of art galleries and antique shops, many of the latter lining Rue de Rollebeck, a steep, one-block cobblestone street leading to the square. The focal point of the Grand Sablon is the Petit Sablon, a beautiful Renaissance-style garden filled with statuary. Nearby is the 12th century Church of Notre Dame de la Chapelle, which shelters Breughel's tomb.
In Brussels, the subject somehow always gets back to food, and I don't want to omit yet one more edible treat to which I succumbed - the Belgian waffle. Would you believe it? Just across the street from our hotel entrance was a window-front waffle shop dispensing fresh-made hot waffle squares, heaped high with whipped cream and drizzled with good Belgian chocolate sauce. I consider it an act of superhuman willpower that I indulged only once during my whole visit.
Getting there: Thai Airways International (<www.thaiairways.com.au>) flies to London and Paris. Economy return airfares from the east coast begin at $1369 plus taxes. Contact your nearest travel agent for the best seasonal fares. The best connection to Brussels from the UK is via the Eurostar train and from Paris by the Thalys train. For discounted tickets and rail passes, contact Rail Plus on (03) 9642 8644 or 1300 555 003 or go to <www.railplus.com.au>