Finding old favorite places in Brussels

Yesterday brought back all the golden memories of wonderful family outings to the Belgian restaurants of my childhood.

In fact we went to one of the Belgian restaurants of my childhood- L’Auberge du Chevalier. It has changed names though and now it’s called Auberge de Beersel. It’s right outside the castle grounds (you can see the castle from the outside terrace (when the weather is nice- obviously NOT in October…)

It's a gorgeous wonderful place, small and intimate and it has been a restaurant for at least one hundred years...
[click on picture to enlarge]

We enjoyed an incredible feast there. We all started the meal with ‘croquettes crevettes’, or fried croquettes with the tiny shrimp from the North Sea. For the main course my mother had a simple plate of toast and forest mushrooms (which is in season right now, and fantastically delicious!) my cousin R, (and T!) had beautiful cod fish with an amazing sauce, and Jenny had rabbit cooked in a barbeque-type sauce made with Kriek beer. I had chicken slow cooked until if was falling off the bone, in the a different barbeque Kriek sauce. (the dark sauce)

With it all we had a perfectly chilled bottle of Sancerre.

It was all awesomely delicious. We finished the meal with ice cream -Dame Blanche (vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce) and Brasilienne (vanilla and chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce and nuts) and it was marvelous. It was amazingly delicious and though I was stuffed from eating my dinner (and samples of everyone else!) I forced myself to clean my bowl.

Someone had to do it.

Of course after finishing the meal I realized that my diet was shot. But it went down in splendor!