Belgium is a wonderful place, I’m told, but it’s not like Brussels. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anywhere that’s like Brussels. The city might conjure up thoughts of the European Union, Jean Claude van Damme and sprouts. To be sure, these are all in evidence. One can’t throw a brick without hitting an EU institution, let alone a lobby firm or NGO looking to influence proceedings. Monsieur van Damme has been immortalised in bronze in front of a shopping centre. And they eat sprouts all year round. But between all this international integration, these flying kicks and brilliant brassicas, there’s a ridiculous haphazardness that is charming and alarming in equal measure. It sometimes feels like the entire city is taking the piss. The Mannekin Pis, the municipal monument and mascot, is a little statue of a naked boy weeing into a fountain, but the real spectacle is the faces of disappointed tourists as they find out that this must-see item on their European itinerary is smaller than some of the gift-shop replicas. So the jokes on them, but they’ll have plenty of chances to see the locals doing a life-sized impersonation, as public urination is something of a Bruxellois hobby after a night on one of Belgium’s most famous exports.
For years, Brussels has had an anything-goes attitude to building regulations and roadworks – explaining the insane mish-mash of beautiful fin-de-siècle architecture and ill-advised modern monstrosities, and why you’ll want to watch your step, as the potholes fill with the results of those inspired by the Mannekin Pis. Belgium extends this loose application of the rules to brewing, too. Boasting hundreds of breweries with thousands of different beers, the Belgians don’t adhere to any ‘purity laws’ like the 1516 ‘Reinheitsgebot’ proudly displayed on many German beers – a sworn promise to stick to set ingredients. Belgian brewers have thrived on experimentation. Fruits, herbs, sugars, blends of different beers: all contribute to the staggering variety available.
This plethora of beer is matched with an equally diverse range of places to enjoy it. With seemingly lax licensing laws, and without Dublin’s Diageo-dominated pub scene, Brussels offers no end of selection, from the dingiest dives to hotel bars of Poirot-esque grandeur. There are crappy, brightly lit cafe-bars with Formica tables, pinball machines and an air of sadness in every commune. There are the obligatory Irish bars – Michael Collins and de Valera’s, owned by the same publican, cater for both sides of the Civil War, and are the best places to watch sports. From the neighbourhoods to the centre we can only hope to glimpse a representative sample, but here goes.
First on many a thirsty tourist’s to-drink list is the warren of narrow streets known as Delirium, centring on a bar of the same name. Run by Huyghe, the brewers of the pink-elephant-labelled Delirium Tremens, this bar claims a menu of over 2,400 beers, 1,765 of which are, they say, Belgian. For beer selection, Delirium can’t be beaten, but it should never be a regular destination. The area has a distinctly Temple Bar feel, broken glass and various bodily fluids run rivulets between cobblestones and the prices even approach Irish levels, too. Add to this rampaging stag parties, droves of screaming Spanish students with matching bags and guys trying to sell you cowboy hats, light-up glasses and fake roses (although this last one happens almost everywhere in Brussels).
With a slightly less jaw-dropping menu (only about 200 beers), Moeder Lambic is a more pleasant all-round experience. Beer is treated with a certain reverence, but the stuffier smugness that has been known to plague craft beer bars elsewhere doesn’t seem to have taken hold, or has maybe been here so long that the shine has worn off. The prices are a touch on the high side, but they have beers on tap that you can only find bottled elsewhere, which is a big draw for anyone wanting to drink some of the local brews at their very best.
As beer is such a pervasive part of Brussels life, there are some amazing and unusual places you can enjoy one. Of course you can get a beer at the cinema, or the five-storey bowling alley, but that’s just the beginning. The military history museum, replete with everything from Napoleonic uniforms to helicopter gunships, has its own little bar with a TV in the corner looping a jet fighter stunt video. You can mix your loves of beer and weaponry further at the headquarters of the Brussels crossbow guild – “Serving the city of Brussels since 1381” – and serving beer while you fire crossbows at their shooting range in the vaults underneath the royal palace. One of the best views in Brussels is from the top of one of its most insanely beautiful buildings, the Musical Instruments Museum. This building, an art nouveau fairytale in glass and wrought iron, and home to a stunning collection of instruments, has a small restaurant at the top where you can enjoy a swift beer and some disapproving glances for not ordering any food. In Ghent, just outside Brussels, Wasbar is a laundrette, hairdresser, and bar where you can stick on a wash, get your hair professionally tousled, and then enjoy a cold one while your unmentionables are in the dryer. Theatre de Toone, hidden in a tiny laneway in Brussels city centre, is a nineteenth-century puppet theatre with bemusing shows every evening and a lively bar where you can drink under the watchful gaze of some terrifying puppets, and maybe spot their resident cat.
The Schaerbeek Beer Museum is not a museum in the traditional sense. It’s a collection of glasses, bottles, beer mats, posters, adverts and other beer-related paraphernalia and memorabilia, but most of the space is given over to a beer hall. This bar, staffed by lots of shrunken old men and women in green aprons, serves La Schaerbeekoise – a brown ale brewed for them by Abbaye des Rocs – and hardboiled eggs for 80 cent.
The Cantillon Brewery, in one of Brussels’s least beauteous neighbourhoods, has stood in the same spot since 1900. This working brewery gives guided tours so you can see the entire process of the unusual practice of brewing “lambic” beers by spontaneous fermentation. Spontaneously fermented beers don’t have yeast purposefully added, but are left open to the air for a period so the naturally occurring yeasts can settle in the mixture. With lots to see and lots to smell, the tour is worthwhile, and you get two small glasses of beer at the end. You will probably be thankful that they are small glasses, too, as Cantillon’s beers are quite an acquired taste. Bitter in the extreme, some have likened the taste to an intense grapefruit, and other, less kind people, noted that it recalls the taste of bile – which is probably a bit far. Either way, it’s certainly an experience, and not one likely to be repeated elsewhere.
So now you want to go out in Brussels, but where to? The European Quarter – especially on Thursday nights, and centring on Place Luxembourg right in front of the Parliament – tends to be seething with lobbyists hitting on MEPs’ trainees, or MEPs hitting on lobby firms’ trainees. This, and the dreadfully poor calibre of bars in the area, makes it a bad call for a long evening out, but a great one for blackmail photographs. In the warmer months, this morass of lechery and ambition spills out into the centre of the square, making it more palatable, but you’ll still want an exit strategy.
Ten minutes west, where the gravitational pull of the EU isn’t quite so strong, is the long, skinny neighbourhood of Ixelles. L’Athénée, a small bar facing an odd little cobbled triangle behind a church, offers a very different type of after-work crowd. In winter the pub is tightly packed, warmed by body heat and an adorable little removable stove and in the summer tables are set out on the pavement and across the road to catch the last of the evening sun. The beer selection is varied and interesting, and the free bar snacks (why don’t we do this in Dublin?) attract NGO workers finished for the day as much as the weed dealers coming off the corner.
On the other side of the city, Barbeton is even more insistent that you don’t go home before your evening starts. This little bar serves an abundance of free food on a Friday evening – serious munch like salads and quiches – making it great place close to the centre of town to prep for a night’s excesses. From here you can easily reach Le Coq, the neighbourhoodiest bar you’ll find in a city centre, and somewhere for increasingly slurred conversation late into the night with lock-ins as standard. For a change of pace, try Quai des Bananes for their stomach-churning list of cocktails served in receptacles better suited to floral arrangements, and replete with skewered fruit, marshmallows and sparklers. Be warned, though, reggaeton is de rigueur and there’s a string of bras, which were sacrificed for free cocktails, hanging above the cabana-style bar. It’s that sort of place.
Whatever end of the tasteful scale you find yourself on at midnight, in the wee hours there are a few places you’ll want to end up at to hammer the final nail into the next day’s coffin. If there’s no hope left and the only way is down, Centro Cabraliego is a sure-fire way to speed your descent into hangover. Locally known as “the Spanish bar”, and rumoured to be subsidised by the Spanish government, nameless beer is splashed messily into plastic cups for a euro each, mixed drinks with lethal amounts of spirits for three. What looks like a tacky bar in front opens into a canteen-style room filled with garden furniture – little more than a massive box to drink in – and teems with those bent on cheerful self-destruction.
For those wishing to retain some shred of dignity, but intent on staying out until it’s bright, Bonnefooi is a safer option. With a balcony overlooking the main bar, people lean precipitously over between gaudy chandeliers to shout drinks orders to their friends below or hopefully entice a prospective smooching partner. The music selection varies from passable to good, and the crowd tend to be those of greater stamina, so there’s usually fun to be had.
When you finally stagger out into the weekend brightness, there’s Belgian brunch to be had in plenty of fantastic places. And you know what? They might even serve you a little beer.
Drink like the Bruxellois(es)
Orval: Probably the best beer you can “reliably” buy in the supermarket and the little night-shops on every corner. I say “reliably” as there’s a long-running shortage eliciting angry phonecalls to radio talkshows deriding the influx of foreign drinkers and the brewing monks’ reluctance to increase production. Bonus points: ask for it everywhere, and if they don’t have it say “ah, la pénurie!” sympathetically.
Brasserie de la Senne: One of the very few breweries actually in Brussels itself, Brasserie de la Senne’s range are hard to miss with their labels like soviet propaganda posters. Not every bar will carry them, and you’ll need to go to specialist beer shops instead of the supermarket, but the mild search will be worth it. A rarity for Belgian beers, Taras Boulba and Stouterik sneak in under 5% alcohol, making them more sessionable than their compatriots.
Jupiler: This is your Heineken and Dutch Gold rolled into one, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into. It’s the cheapest six-pack in every shop and there’s a tap in every pub. The Bruxellois(es) drink this in half-pints at the bar, which seems quaint at first, but this beer’s questionable enough without letting it go warm and flat, so you’ll stick out if you’ve got a big pint mug of it.
