Offbeat Eats

Most any time we end up traveling with my brother Dan and his wife Sophie, we usually try to go out for at least one fancy dinner and live it up a bit. When we were in Belgium, we figured this would be a good opportunity to check out Belga Queen, one of the trendy Brussels restaurants that has been a hot spot for several years. Located just down the street from the Royal Theater, Belga Queen is fashioned out of an early 1900s bank, back in the era when banks were pretty much expected to have elaborate, over-the-top, marble interiors. And Belga Queen didn’t disappoint.

As I mentioned in the previous review, Belgium has several well-known food items. The Belgian waffle (the gaufre de liege). Beer. Mussels (les moules). Chocolate. And frites. Yeah, us Americans may think that we love what we call French Fries, but the Belgians really have a serious thing going for their frites. So when my sister-in-law was taking us on a walking tour of Brussels showing us some of her old haunts, one of the places she took us was Maison Antoine. Maison Antoine is a little stand in the Etterbeek section of Brussels in Place Jourdan, and quite frankly, they are the attraction for the area, with long lines snaking through the park up to the two ordering windows. While Maison Antoine nominally has a rather full menu of items (including such dubious items as “Chicken Sticks” and the “Carrero”, a McRib-like heavily processed pork patty), there’s really only one item on the menu worth considering, and that’s the frites (available in two different sizes). And that’s pretty much what everyone orders: the frites, walking off with cornets of fresh frites and condiments for munching either on the go, or by sitting down and eating them with a beer at one of the local cafes (most of which are perfectly happy with you bringing in frites from outside).

Okay, I’m going to start out by saying that this review is of a place that’s not particularly offbeat or unique. You see, pretty much any place you go in Belgium, you can count on three things being widely available: beer, frites, and Gaufres de Liege, aka the Belgian Waffle. Doing a simple walking tour of Brussels, I passed approximately two dozen storefronts, carts, and food trucks selling freshly made Gaufres de Liege, and by the time we got to Square de Meeûs, the nice aromas of freshly-baked waffles had finally defeated me, and I had to stop at Pascalino’s Glaces et Gaufres for a waffle.

(Closed) Every trip to London is a chance to find a place selling just about every cuisine from the Eastern hemisphere (Western cuisine not as much; real Mexican is only barely starting to make inroads in London, and South American is still damn near nonexistent), so I like to try new places. This time, my brother and sister-in-law wanted to show me one of their favorites, a small Sri Lankan place near Victoria Station called The Sekara.

Since my last visit to London, a new ramen shop has opened up in Soho, and it’s been getting a lot of coverage in the various review sites, like TimeOut London. I always like a good ramen joint (heck, I found a truly excellent one hiding in Canton, MI), and while there are several decently-rated ramen joints in London still on my hit list, after reading Krista’s review of Bone Daddies on Passport Delicious, I decided to bump it up to the top of the list, especially after hearing how much she enjoyed the eggs.

You occasionally find some interesting hidden items in London, sometimes even hidden in plain sight. St Georges Square is a relatively modest Square in Pimlico, and contains the Pimlico Garden, which aside from a modest statue representing "Boredom rising from the bath", isn’t of much note itself. But on the North end of the garden lies one of the few remaining examples of an anachronism: a Cabmen’s Shelter Fund Cab Shelter. Basically a small shelter containing a seating area for cab drivers on their break, and a cooking area (often staffed by the Cabmen’s Shelter Fund, historically, these days often contracted out), these little shelters used to be fairly common all over London, with over 60 of them in the early 1900s. They aren’t as common now (only 13 of them remain in service), but for a small handful of them, the caterers in them are also open to the public, selling the same food out of a window that they sell to the cabbies. St George’s Square has one of these, a business called Alf’s Pitstop, who sells a variety of sandwiches and drinks to the public.

As I mentioned before in my review of The Golden Hind, it can actually be rather difficult to find a good fish and chip shop in London. Back 20 years ago, there were more of them than you could count, and the dish was considered one of the cornerstones of British folk food. But since then, the tastes of London have become more metropolitan and worldly, and as a result, fish and chips got supplanted a while back by Chicken Tikka Masala as the national dish. Meanwhile, most of the really good fish and chip places have closed up. Oh, there’s no shortage of places that can serve up fish and chips, usually by throwing frozen chunks of pre-breaded fish in a fryer, but few places remain that really focus on doing a quality fish and chips. While back in the days of yore it was an upstart (Fisher’s open in 1982), and it’s had several changes of ownership, Fisher’s is still cranking out a variety of fish and chips from their small storefront in Fulham near Bishop’s Park.

(Closed) One of the many things I love about visiting London is that it has a rather nice variety of chocolate shops. Indeed, a few years ago, we did a chocolate tour in London (wow, has it been almost three years?), and William Curley Patissier Chocolatier was one of the stops. Our visit there highlighted their ice creams, sorbet, and hot chocolate, but they showed us what they serve for their "Dessert Bar", which is a multi-course dessert. We vowed to come back. Several trips to London since then threw various complications (primarily, coming during the holiday seasons, when they were either closed, or packed with holiday celebrants), but this trip, we were finally able to get a decent seating for their dessert bar.

As I mentioned in my review of El Pollo Rico, it has been a long standing tradition of mine, on every trip to the Ballston area, to go out for pollo a la brasa (a.k.a. Peruvian chicken). Back when I started that tradition, there was basically one place in the area to get such chicken: El Pollo Rico, but in the intervening years a lot of other chicken places opened up. I had been to, and enjoyed many others, but one I hadn’t been to was Super Pollo (which has a half dozen or so DC area locations). But on my latest trip to Ballston, some traffic backup coming in from Dallas cut into my schedule a bit, and instead of my usual El Pollo Rico stop, I decided to instead hit Super Pollo, since it is literally right next to the client I was visiting.

(Closed) One of the unwritten rules amongst most of my coworkers that travel a lot is that you shouldn’t waste a business trip meal eating someplace we could eat back at home. So that usually means seeking out at least one of the ethnic cuisines that aren’t well represented in our neck of the woods, in this case, several of us knew of a decent Thai place down the road from NASA Goddard in Greenbelt, MD: the oddly-named Siri’s Chef’s Secret. Siri’s describes themselves as “Thai and American Food”, but with the exception of the dessert menu, most of the menu is straightforward Thai dishes, with just enough American food that if you brought a group and one person wasn’t comfortable with Thai food, they’d be happy. But they’ve got most of the major dishes I look for, including Tom Yum and Tom Kha soups, several rice dishes, basil dishes, and noodle dishes, served up with levels of spice ranging from mild to truly spicy (also a pleasant departure from the generally light spicing of Northern New England).