Category: Brussels (Page 4 of 4)

We come here often for a quick lunch with the colleagues. The café offers a good value lunch menu.

Last week I went to a show in the AB with some friends, so it was a no brainer to have dinner in the café before the show. The café serves Jacob’s Creek, my favorite Australian sparkling wine. A nice starter for the evening. I went for a classic: tomate crevette (tomato with shrimps). The tomato was peeled (as it should be, but not many restaurants do this), served with lots of shrimps in a light sauce with home made french fries. I drank an excellent glass of white wine with my meal. Very delicious indeed.

The café can get a little crowded and service is not that good, but the food is always nice.

AB Cafe & Resto, Boulevard Anspach 110, Brussels 1000, Belgium
https://www.abconcerts.be/nl/cafe-resto/2/
+32 2 548 24 55

Visited December 2014. You can find my review about AB Cafe & Resto also on TripAdvisor. My scores: value 4/5, atmosphere 3/5, service 3/5.

We had dinner here on a friday night with friends. Loved the interior of the restaurant with beautiful wooden panels and decorated with lots of different bottles of wine. The atmosphere was really relaxed.

Food was typical Italian: I started with a carpaccio, to proceed with home made pasta with mushrooms and ended my meal with lemon sorbet and wodka. To finish it of I ordered a limoncello, which was nice but not served cold enough to my taste. The wine was very nice (as it should be in an Enoteca).

Service was very friendly. Our waiter proposed the wine after enquiring about our taste and we really liked it.

Not the best Italian food I’ve had in my life, but very enjoyable none the less. Would definitely go back here.

Enoteca Da Valentino, Rue du Champ de Mars 13, Brussels 1050, Belgium
http://www.enotecadavalentino.com/
+32 2 511 84 35

Visited December 2014. You can find my review about Enoteca Da Valentino also on TripAdvisor. My scores: value 5/5, atmosphere 5/5, service 4/5, food 4/5.

Ideal place to have a quick lunch with colleagues. The pasta is really great, but be warned, the pasta is not Italian at all. Most pasta’s are served quite heavy and spicy sauces. Bolognaise and Savoyard are personal favorites. If you can’t choose, you can try the trio. The pasta is cheap and well worth the money. I always go for the normal portion, which I personally find quite large, but my male colleagues prefer the big portion.

Service is efficient, but only speak French. Atmosphere is typically Brussels, with nice wooden panels on the walls and cute and colorful tiles on the floor, which gives it a really authentic vibe. In summer you can sit outside. The location isn’t that great as it is somewhat outside of the touristic center of Brussels. Not a typical neighbourhood to go for a meal.

Be sure to make reservations when you want to go there for a lunch, because at noon the place is full of people who want a quick lunch.

Le Meyboom, Rue des Sables, Brussels, Belgium
679041844

Visited December 2014. You can find my review about Le Meyboom also on TripAdvisor. My scores: value 5/5, atmosphere 3/5, service 4/5, food 4/5.

It was a sunny day in Brussels so we went with a bunch of colleagues for a quick lunch. Since we had enjoyed lunching in the garden of café Novo before, we decided to go there to have lunch outside. We were seven persons in total. Not a very big group, but the waitress asked us non the less to only order three different dishes.

From the start it was clear that the waitress didn’t have much experience. She started by bringing me the wrong drink. But ok, my drink got switched for the right one, so no big deal. We ordered two home made burgers, a sandwich with carpaccio, a falafel salad and a carrot soup (ok, so technically those are four different dishes, but we figured that the soup would be made in advance, so no extra hassle for the cook).

The waitress warned us that the sandwich could take some time. We were a little bit surprised by that, because, honestly, how long does it take to make a sandwich with carpaccio? Did they forget to bake the bread this morning? We joked a bit about it and waited for our food to arrive, meanwhile sipping from our drinks. My colleagues who ordered the home made ice-tea were very disappointed. The ice-tea was bright yellow and did not taste good.

One hour and a half later, we still didn’t have any food. We were by that time all very hungry and didn’t find it funny anymore. So when our food finally arrived (with no excuses whatsoever for taking this long), we were surprised to find that indeed the carpaccio sandwich still wasn’t ready.

Because we were all so hungry, we started eating, thinking the sandwich would arrive any moment. Sadly, the falafel salad I ordered was really terrible. The falafel was very dry, like eating sand. And there wasn’t enough salad on the plate. I finished my plate, since I was that hungry, but did not enjoy it at all. The home made burger and soup seemed to be better.

A quarter of an hour later, we had all finished, except for my poor colleague who ordered the sandwich. Since we were all running very late, he told the waitress to cancel the order and we left without him having eaten anything. An absolute disgrace.

Service at Novo was absolutely terrible. Never before have a been to a café or restaurant where one of the persons just didn’t get any food without any form of apology or compensation.

Personally I will never set food in this café again and I strongly advice against eating here.

Cafe Novo, Pl. de la Vieille Hle aux Bles 37, Brussels 1000, Belgium
http://www.cafenovo.be/
+32 2 503 09 05

Visited July 2014. You can find my review about Cafe Novo also on TripAdvisor. My scores: value 2/5, atmosphere 3/5, service 1/5, food 1/5.