[title type="h5"]Wednesday, April 16, 2014.
Retracing Our Steps In Brugges. Searching For Ghent.[/title]
The last night of our wedding trip in 1989 in Brugges [brewzh], Belgium. It's an old port town off the North Sea. These day's, it's much loved for the many shipping canals that riddle the north part of town and give it the nickname "The Venice of Belgium." The canals are not as omnipresent as in Venice, but the comparison is apt enough.
[caption id="attachment_42083" align="alignleft" width="270"]
Brugges.[/caption]Mary Ann's parking-witch powers showed us an incredibly convenient parking spot just inside Brugges' centrum. A loose crowd led us toward the striking spires, towers and steeples in the center of town. A film festival was going on, which may explain the carnival-like party going on right in front of the medieval castle. The castle itself is the grabber, if you as me. It is little changed since the days when knights paraded around there. The stone edifice would need no redecoration if commandeered for a movie staged in medieval times.
Our two goals in Brugges were to b) have lunch and 1) find the hotel where we stayed in 1989. Neither of us has a good idea as to its location. I have a fuzzy recollection of a shallow, narrow canal with grassy banks. But there are many such here. I also recalled going to a charcuterie and cheese shop around the corner, but such shops are so common in Europe as to be worthless as a landmark. Talking to shopkeepers and restaurateurs, we got the idea that there has been so much change in Brugges that our old resting place may well have become something else entirely.
[caption id="attachment_42084" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Classic Belgian fries from a Nepalese cafe in Brugges.[/caption]
Lunch was less complicated. We wanted to find the kind of fried potatoes for which Belgium is famous. So far, every place we inspected had what were obviously frozen, machine-cut fries. (By their uniformity of size and color ye shall know them.) To our continuing astonishment, we kept hearing the same apology: "We cut the potatoes ourselves when we make them at home," they said, "but the restaurants don't go to all that trouble anymore." Score another unwanted victory for the American way of doing things. Frozen fries as we know them were invented by the Simplot company in Idaho, which soon drove all their competitors out of business. How ironic that fresh-cut fries are now among the most current of all American cooking vogues involves fresh-cut fries!
[caption id="attachment_42085" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Rotisserie chicken from a Nepalese chef in Brugges, Belgium.[/caption]
We finally did find the genuine article in, of all places, a little café operated by a couple of people from Nepal. They cooked Indian, Middle Eastern, Italian, and Thai food, plus rotisserie chicken (clearly th specialty of the house) and hamburgers. The food looked terrific as we passed by. Especially the fries.
"We cut the fries and blanch them every morning," said the young woman who ran the tiny dining room while her husband did the cooking. "We fry them as ordered." Just what we were looking for. Strange that the remainder of the menu offered no mussels, waterzooie, Belgian endive salads, anguille au vert or anything else Belgian. We started with a cone of fries and a beer (another Belgian specialty). Even though the place was small and not well ventilated, we stayed on to have a full lunch. MA's plate was filled with appealing and delicious) rotisserie chicken. For me, what would in New Orleans be called panneed chicken with a red sauce on the side.
All this was very good, and so cheap as to be laughable. But it was unsettling to need to go to a Nepalese pan-Asian restaurant to get a Belgian classic. Tsk, tsk. We would not again find another Belgian restaurant where the fries were worth eating.
We were not there at the right time for a more formal lunch. We stepped inside a somewhat formal place with a Michelin star, more to look it over than to dine just then. The owner and his wife, both of whom were on the older side, seemed not to be interested in our custom. This raised MA's dander, so we beat it before a fight ensued.
We walked around the town some more, stopping after an hour of chocolate-shopping for an espresso at a café next to a bar named for a theater that wasn't there anymore. Or was it? The waiter was dramatic in his explanation, and I'm not sure what part of it was real.
Another stop was in a very beautiful hotel whose rates ran around $600 a night. That's enough to make even MA shrink back, but I could feel the way she tucked away a note about the place, in case a sufficient fortune comes our way for us to check in here.
Departing Brugges wasn't as hard as the exit from Brussels, but not easy, either. A street we thought would lead out of town took us so deep into the capillaries between buildings that we could have rolled down the windows and touched the walls on both sides. Is "Belgium" an ancient Indo-European root word meaning "where the hell are we?"?
[caption id="attachment_42086" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The center of Ghent.[/caption]
Our reservation for tonight is in Ghent, where finding our way around made Brussels seem a piece of chocolate cake. Although we penetrated the centrum (a word that translates roughly into New Orleans Creole as "the French Market") and found a series of signs pointing the way to the Marriott, finding the actual hotel became comically difficult. We came down to getting directions, going a block, turning, then having to ask directions again from someone else. Several times. Thr problem was a new version of a familiar theme: one could look directly at the Marriott Hotel and not see the sign on its facade. It was in a prominent space, along the row of buildings that surrounds Ghent's Grand Place. With the town's main navigable waterway passing through it and an oversupply of large, ornate churches and other buildings, Ghent's centrum is among the most beautiful and impressive we've seen.
Two aspects of our hotel were unique. Despite the classical facade facing the river, the hotel itself was thoroughly modern, with a wall of glass looking to the very old brick buildings that surrounded it. Second, the front desk staffer was almost insanely helpful. He even came out with us to find our parked car (which, after we finally found the hotel, we lost track of). He also had a lengthy commentary to offer on the relative merits of the many restaurants along the river.
[caption id="attachment_42087" align="alignleft" width="360"]
From the second-floor dining room of Belga Queen in Ghent, to the bar below.[/caption]After we unloaded in the room and took a nap, we went along with his strong recommendation of the Belga Queen. It was across the river from our hotel, offering a guarantee that we would not get lost after dinner. The sun was setting as we joined the waiting list for a window table upstairs (the prime spot, said the Marriott guy). We ordered a Negroni and Champagne, had a look at the menu, and decided quickly that if this weren't the most intriguing restaurant in Ghent, then Ghent must be a hell of a great food town.
[caption id="attachment_42088" align="alignleft" width="359"]
Amuse bouche, Ghent style.[/caption]The realities bore that out convincingly. What do we want to eat? we asked the waiter. "Fish," he said. Especially the turbot and the lemon sole. We got both, and both were spectacularly good. How old is this building? Built in the 1200s as a grain warehouse serving the river shipping business. What's this in the fake eggshell? An amuse bouche of wild mushrooms, gnocchi and soft-scrambled egg. How's the carpaccio? Brilliant, with shaved parmigiana-Reggiano and arugula. What's with this asparagus special? Have it as a starter. (It was white asparagus, which in Europe is universally preferred to green.)
[caption id="attachment_42091" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Lemon sole at Belga Queen.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_42089" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Looking onto Ghent's river.[/caption]
This was a marvelous dinner. I am writing this on April 21, and so far no other dinner on this trip has come close to equaling the Belga Queen.
Belga Queen. Ghent, Belgium. Graslei 10. +32 9 280 01 00.
[title type="h6"] Yesterday || Tomorrow[/title]
Written by Tom Fitzmorris April 15, 2014 02:01 in
