Our Brussels food bucket list (and we ate it all)
We dedicated an entire Brussels trip to eating, with a list to tick off. Mission accomplished, waistbands tested. Here’s the bucket list, all twelve, in roughly the order you should attempt them.
1. Frites from a real friterie
Start here. A cone of double-fried chips from Maison Antoine or Frit Flagey, with proper sauce, eaten standing up (best frites). The benchmark.
Belgian frites are not chips. The double-frying — blanched first in lower-temperature fat, then finished at higher heat — gives you a particular combination of crisp exterior and fluffy interior that reheated oven chips approximate but never achieve. The sauce matters too: not ketchup, not vinegar, but proper andalouse or samurai from the pump at the counter. Maison Antoine near Place Flagey in Ixelles has been making the argument since the 1940s and shows no sign of running out of conviction. Eat them hot, standing at the counter or on the pavement, within three minutes of receiving them.
2. A proper waffle (both kinds)
A light Brussels waffle and a chewy Liège waffle, both plain, no sugar towers (the debate).
The rule is simple: both should be eaten without toppings except perhaps icing sugar for the Brussels version. Anything else — Nutella, fruit, whipped cream — is concealing whatever is underneath, and what’s underneath is the interesting part. A proper Brussels waffle from Maison Dandoy is a delicate, yeast-risen thing. A proper Liège waffle from any decent bakery is chewy, dense and sweet from the pearl sugar caramelising through it. They are completely different and you should eat both.
3. Pralines from a maker
Fresh pralines from Marcolini, Neuhaus or Laurent Gerbaud — not the tourist shops (best chocolate).
Marcolini on the Place du Grand Sablon is the address — formal, precise, exquisite ganaches — but Laurent Gerbaud near the Galeries Royales is the more personal experience, with a chocolatier whose tastes are unconventional and whose results are extraordinary. Neuhaus invented the praline in 1912 and the original shop in the Galeries is still there. What these places share: fresh chocolate made to be eaten within a few days, not factory-made confections designed for a tourist-shop shelf.
4. Moules-frites in Sainte-Catherine
The national dish, in season, in the seafood quarter (where).
Sainte-Catherine is Brussels’ old fish market quarter, and it’s still where the city goes for seafood. A pot of moules marinière — or à la crème, or with celery and white wine — arrives with a second pot for the shells and a generous cone of frites alongside. The protocol is to eat the first mussel with a fork and use the shell thereafter as tongs for the rest. Eating well in Sainte-Catherine is easy; the neighbourhood does the work.
5. A gueuze at Cantillon
Sour lambic where it’s made — the most distinctly Brussels thing you can drink (Cantillon).
Gueuze is a blend of young and aged lambic — spontaneously fermented, funky, acidic, the antithesis of industrial beer. Cantillon in Anderlecht is a working brewery that hasn’t changed much since 1900: open wooden fermentation vats, barrels laid in rows, cobwebs protected by law because the spiders keep the mites off the barrels. It’s a completely authentic experience in a city that sometimes struggles with authenticity, and the sour beer is genuinely complex and interesting. Order the gueuze.
6. Carbonnade flamande
Beef slow-braised in Belgian beer — the great comfort dish (Belgian dishes).
Carbonnade is what happens when you braise beef long and slow in dark Belgian ale, with onions and a touch of thyme, until the meat is tender and the sauce glossy and deep. It’s served everywhere, but the best versions come from small neighbourhood restaurants rather than tourist-strip brasseries. Order it with a glass of the same type of beer it was cooked in. The flavours cohere.
7. Shrimp croquettes
Croquettes aux crevettes grises — crisp shells, tiny North Sea shrimp. A genuine delicacy.
These are a more refined proposition than they sound. The grijze garnaal — the small grey North Sea shrimp — is sweet and delicate, mixed into a firm, creamy béchamel, crumbed and fried to a thin crisp shell. A proper croquette collapses slightly when you cut it and the filling oozes. It’s a specific pleasure that Belgian cuisine does exceptionally well, and you find it everywhere from top-end brasseries to neighbourhood cafés.
8. A Trappist beer in a brown café
A Westmalle Tripel or Chimay Blue in a wood-panelled café (beer bars).
The brown café — bruin café, in the Flemish — is a Brussels institution: dark wood, worn bar tops, mirrored walls, a serious beer list and no pretension whatsoever. À la Mort Subite in the city centre is the famous example, and it earns the reputation. The beer comes in its specific branded glass — Trappist beers each have their own glass shape, designed for the specific characteristics of that beer — and the combination of room, glass and beer is the whole point. This is not a drink to rush.
9. Stoemp
Rustic mash with veg and a sausage, in a Marolles café — humble and lovely.
Stoemp is comfort food in its most direct form: mashed potato with a root vegetable stirred through — parsnip, celeriac, leek — topped with a braised sausage or a piece of braised meat. It’s the kind of dish that warms you from the inside on a grey Brussels day, and it costs almost nothing. The Marolles neighbourhood — the old working-class quarter below the Palais de Justice — has the right cafés for it: unfussy, unhurried, genuinely local.
10. Speculoos, somehow
The spiced biscuit, as a biscuit, a spread, or flavouring a dessert. Everywhere, and you’ll get hooked.
Speculoos — the thin, crisp biscuit made with a blend of warming spices — comes with every coffee in Belgium, appears in desserts, is available as a spread, and by the end of any Brussels trip you’ll have eaten about fifteen of them without noticing. It’s the kind of low-key staple that you only miss when you’re somewhere that doesn’t have it.
11. A vol-au-vent
Old-school creamy chicken-and-mushroom pastry — generous and comforting.
A vol-au-vent in the Belgian style is a substantial puff-pastry case filled with a generous, creamy blanquette of chicken, mushrooms and sometimes veal in a rich sauce. It’s resolutely old-fashioned and completely delicious, the kind of dish that would be patronised in a trendier food city but in Brussels is simply what’s on the menu and obviously good.
12. A dame blanche
Finish with the classic vanilla-ice-cream-and-hot-chocolate sundae.
Dame blanche is the canonical Belgian dessert: vanilla ice cream, hot chocolate sauce poured at the table, whipped cream optional. The hot-chocolate-on-cold-ice-cream combination is one of those fundamental pleasures that needs no improvement.
How to do it efficiently
You can’t eat all this in a day without consequences. Spread it over a weekend, and shortcut the search with a food tour on day one — a food tour knocks out half the list while teaching you where the locals go. Then pick off the rest yourself.
The golden rules throughout: buy from makers, eat one street back from the Grand-Place, and pace the beer (Belgian dishes). Do that, and Brussels turns out to be one of the great eating cities in Europe — and this list is the proof. We regret nothing.
