Follow Walkin’Thai on Facebook at the risk of salivating on your desk with every daily special announcement: “Mm, it smells good in here, like stir-fried ginger chicken and vegetables…” or, “Come in for lunch today, we’re tossing chicken and Thai basil in the wok.” These status updates, of course, come with graphic, full-colour photographs of said dishes. It’s enough to make you hungry for Thai food every day of the week.
Fashion retailer Smets’ commercial empire encompasses 21 shops in its native Luxembourg, which makes its sole holding in Belgium seem a bit of an outpost. But, like the company’s flagship store across the border, Smets Brussels is twinned with a gourmet in-house restaurant. For those unfamiliar with the Smets urban aesthetic, the name alone – Bowery, after a neighbourhood in lower Manhattan – speaks volumes.
Tucked down a cobbled street a few steps from the Grand Sablon, Soul offers the conscientious diner food to warm body and spirit. Outside, it’s unremarkable; inside, it’s dark and cosy with work by local artists on the walls and plenty of atmosphere even when it’s mostly empty, as was the case on our Sunday evening visit.
A toukoul is a small house built by women from the Afar ethnic group of Ethiopia. It’s also the name of Brussels’ newest Ethiopian restaurant, built by the young, and male, Belgian-Ethiopian entrepreneur Haile Abebe.
The décor is spacious, modern and inviting. Walls are covered by photos of Mick Jagger, Steve McQueen and other vintage stars knocking back booze, and blackboards behind the bar advertise the day’s liquid offers. There’s a cluster of high tables with bar stools that fill up with after-office tipplers in the evening, when there’s an inventive tapas menu featuring nibbles like octopus with fennel, sardine and preserved lemon rillettes or chorizo tapenade.
There is a reason, however, why Sjo d’O was the only place around Brussels that the 2012Michelin Guideadded to its Bib Gourmand list of best-value restaurants, and it soon became clear when a plate of plump tempura prawns arrived as an ideal appetiser while we waited for our meal.
The no-frills interior, with sparsely decorated green walls, a long wooden bar and a heavy curtain at the door to keep the draughts out, makes for a cosy, relaxed atmosphere. The quality of the food, however, is the star of the show here. My companion and I both went for the €30 menu, which comprises a glass of cava, four cold tapas from a selection at the bar and three “surprise” hot ones decided by the chef. Best among our cold starters were: new potatoes with spiced fresh tuna, chorizo mousse and Asian-marinated raw tuna.
Many years ago, I shared a flat in the south of France with a bunch of students, including a chap from Reading called Nigel. For a year he lambasted us with his radical vegetarian agenda, whipping out ethical, health and philosophical complaints every time any of us slapped a merguez on the grill or brought home a salami-topped pizza. Not surprisingly, we drifted apart after moving back to London, but some months later we found ourselves leaving a boozy student party late at night and feeling peckish.
Ensconced in a classy Avenue Louise town house, ER PU.RE is a feast for the eyes. The three dining rooms are warmly painted in dove grey and taupe, while big, bold black-and-white portraits of chef Vincent Vervisch and his team adorn the walls.
We should be thankful for the fact that the naff, boorish, bigoted and ignorant Alan Partridge is purely fictional. Invented by BBC Radio 4’s On the Hour team and portrayed with panache by Steve Coogan, Partridge exudes incompetence and narcissism.
