CHAPTER III

BELGIAN TOWNS

The food of the country—Antwerp—Spa—Bruges—Ostende.

I, the Editor, cannot do better in commencing this chapter than to introduce you to H.L., a littérateur and a "fin gourmet," living in Belgium, who has written the notes on "the food of the country" on Antwerp and Spa, and to whom I am indebted for the entire succeeding chapter on the Brussels' restaurants.

The Food of the Country

The Belgian is a big eater and a bird-eater. As a rule, in Belgium the restaurant that can put forth the longest menu will attract the most customers. There are people in Brussels who regularly travel out to Tirlemont, a little Flemish town nearly twenty miles away, to partake of a famous table-d'hôte dinner to which the guests sit down at one o'clock, and from which they seldom rise before five. The following is a specimen carte of one of these Gargantuan gorges served in December.

Huîtres de Burnham.
Potage Oxtail.
Saumon de Hollande à la Russe.
Bouchées à la Reine.
Chevreuil Diane Chasseresse.
Bécasses bardées sur Canapé.
Tête de veau en Tortue.
Surprises Grazilla (a Sorbet).
Pluviers dorés poire au vin.
Jambonneau au Madère.
Petites fèves de Marais à la Crème.
Salmis de Caneton Sauvage.
Faisan de Bohême.
Salade de Saison.
Dinde truffée Mayonnaise.
Glace Vanillée.
Fruits. Gâteaux. Dessert.

All this for five francs! with a bottle of Burgundy to wash it down, at any price from a crown to a pound. One thing that can safely be said about the Belgian restaurants is that a good bottle of Burgundy can nearly always be bought in both town and country. It is often told that the best Burgundy in the world is to be found in Belgian cellars. Whether this is a reputation maintained in honour of the Dukes of Burgundy who once ruled the land, or whether the good quality of the wine is due to the peculiar sandy soil, which permits of an unvarying temperature in the cellars, I will leave others to determine, but the fact remains that from a Beaujolais at 2 francs 50 centimes to a Richebourg at 20 francs, the Burgundy offered to the traveller in Belgium is generally unimpeachable. Ghent is another town famous for its big feasts. The market dinner on Friday at the Hôtel de la Poste is often quoted as a marvellous "spread," but the best restaurant in Ghent is undoubtedly Mottez's, on the Avenue Place d'Armes. This is an old-fashioned place with no appearance of a restaurant outside, and a stranger would easily pass it by. Here one dines both à la carte and at table-d'hôte; the table-d'hôte is well worth trying, though some of the dishes can be safely passed over. The wines at Mottez's are very good, and some special old Flemish beer in bottles should be asked for. A great local dish is Hochepot Gantois, a mixture of pork, sausages, and vegetables which only the very hungry or the very daring should experiment upon at a strange place. Flemish cooking as a rule is fat and porky, and there is a dish often seen on the carte called Choesels à la Bruxelloise, which is considered a delicacy by the natives, and it is supposed to be a hash cooked in sherry or marsala; it is, however, a dish of mystery. A plat always to be found in Belgium (especially in the Flanders district), is Waterzoei de Poulet, a chicken broth served with the fowl. This is usually very safe, and any one going to Mottez's at Ghent should try it there. Carbonades Flamandes is another Flemish dish which, if well done, can be eaten without fear. This is beef-steak stewed in "faro," an acid Flemish beer, and served with a rich brown sauce. Salade de Princesses Liégeoises is a salad made with scarlet runners mixed with little pieces of fried bacon. The bacon takes the place of oil, while the vinegar should be used with rather a heavy hand. When other salads are scarce, this makes a really toothsome dish. Of all the Belgian plats, however, first and foremost must be placed Grives à la Namuroise, which of course are only to be obtained in the autumn. I have said that the Belgian is a bird-eater, and throughout the country every species of bird is pressed into service for the table. A stranger visiting the Ardennes will be struck by the remarkable silence of the woods, which is caused by the wholesale destruction of the birds. How the supply is kept up it is difficult to say, but no Belgian dinner is considered complete without a bird of some sort, and when grives are in season, thousands must be served daily. A grive proper is a thrush, but I fear that blackbirds and starlings often find their way to the casserole under the name of a grive. They should be cooked with the trail, in which mountain-ash berries are often found. These give the bird a peculiar and rather bitter flavour, but the berry that must be used in the cooking is that of the juniper plant, which grows very plentifully in Belgium. A traveller through Belgium in the summer or early autumn should always make a point of ordering grives at a good restaurant. When grives go out of season, we have woodcock and snipe; and there are several houses which make a speciality of Bécasses à la fine Champagne. At Mons and at Liège, and I think at Charleroi also, there is every year a woodcock feast, just as there is an oyster feast at Colchester. At these festivities a little wax candle is placed on the table beside each guest, so that he can take the head of his bécasse and frizzle it in the flame before he attacks its brains. Then we have plovers and larks in any quantity, but I would not like to vouch for what are often served as alouettes and mauviettes. The one bird that we never get in Belgium is grouse, unless it is brought over specially from England or Scotland. It has always been found impossible to rear grouse in the country. In the neighbourhood of Spa there are great stretches of moorlands reaching almost to the German frontier, covered with heather, which look as if they would be the ideal home of the grouse. Here M. Barry Herrfeldt, of the Château du Marteau at Spa, a real good sportsman, has tried his very utmost to rear grouse; first he laid down thousands of eggs and set them under partridges, but this proved a failure; then he introduced young birds, but they all died off, and I think he has now given up the attempt in despair. Whilst speaking of partridges, I ought to mention that there is no partridge in the world so plump and sweet as one shot in the neighbourhood of Louvain, where they feed on the beetroot cultivated for the sugar factories. At a restaurant Coq de bruyère is often served as grouse, but this is a blackcock. One last note: outside the capital and at all but the best restaurants the Flemish custom is to "dine" in the middle of the day and "sup" at about seven.