What to eat Belgium? culinary specialties and gastronomy

With its largely flat or, at best, hilly terrain, Belgium has always been a prosperous agricultural land. Cereals, vegetables, fruit, dairy products, beef and pork, not to mention the riches of the North Sea, have forged Belgian gastronomy. This passion for food is even reflected in the Gourmet Library and Museum in Hermalle-sous-Huy, east of Brussels. This cultural center, founded in 1995, is dedicated to the history of gastronomy and boasts one of Europe's largest libraries on cooking and food.

There are numerous products protected by various European labels, some of which you can take home with you in your luggage. One example is the tasty Ardenne sausage, which has a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). Made from a blend of pork or pork and beef, it is also known as "pipe d'Ardenne" when straight, "collier d'Ardenne" when curved. Produced in the province of Luxembourg - not to be confused with the country of the same name - Ardenne ham is also listed as a PGI product. It was exported to France as early as the Middle Ages, and featured on the menus of most ^19th-century Belgian restaurants. It can be smoked or unsmoked. Pâté gaumais is a pie stuffed with noble cuts of pork, marinated in wine or vinegar, with spices and herbs, and originating in the town of Gaume. It is very common in both butcher's and baker's shops in Pays gaumais, near the border with Lorraine.

The country boasts some 300 types of cheese (up to 500, according to some agricultural agencies), which, in relation to its surface area, is quite impressive. Surprisingly, only Herve cheese has had a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) since 1996. It has been produced since the ^13th century, when the first written records of the product date back. Belgium has a long tradition of cheese-making, mainly in monasteries. The recipes once developed and produced in abbeys are still produced in structures better adapted to the market, even if many small local productions still exist. With an average consumption of 20 kg of cheese per inhabitant per year, the flat country ranks third in terms of consumption, behind France and Italy. Given the sheer number of cheeses produced on Belgian soil, it's impossible to list them all. But the diversity should satisfy every palate: hard, soft, baked, with or without rind, strong or mild. Many localities have their own speciality. Some of the most notable cheeses include: Trappist cheese from Chimay, from Orval Abbey, from Maredsous Abbey, Beauvoorde, Boû d'Fagne, Carré de Tourpes, Bouquet des Moines and Doré de Lathuy. Many of these cheeses have a creamy, fragrant paste and a rust-colored rind that's moist to the touch, reminiscent of Munster or Maroilles. Also not to be missed is the incomparable Remoudou, very similar to Fromage de Herve, but creamier and tangier, often considered by connoisseurs to be one of the world's finest cheeses. There are also a number of cheeses from Flanders, such as the blue-veined Pas de Bleu or the Damse Mokke, with its unique dome shape.

Some fresh products are more difficult to transport, but deserve to be tasted on the spot. These include the excellent West-Vlaams Rood or Rouge de Belgique beef, raised mainly in Flanders, or the Plate de Florenville potatoes produced in Gaume in Wallonia. A more surprising speciality, poperingse hopscheuten, or hop shoots, resemble tiny asparagus and are picked between February and March before they emerge from the ground, to keep them crisp and white. It takes around two hours to harvest 1 kg of hop shoots, and they don't keep for more than a day and a half, hence a price tag of up to €1,000/kg. They are particularly common in Flanders, but also in Bavaria and Alsace. Unsurprisingly, Belgians are the world's biggest consumers of chicory, consuming some 8 kg per person per year. So much so, in fact, that Brussels grondwitloof or endive has been awarded a PGI.

There are also a number of sweet specialties with a European label, such as Liers vlaaike, a small cake made with candy syrup and four spices. Over 300 years old, it is one of the oldest regional products from Lierre (Lier in Dutch) in Flanders. It's a much-loved local specialty. Geraardsbergse mattentaart, or maton tart, is a recipe from the Grammont region(Geraardsbergen in Flemish) in Flanders. Maton is a curd obtained by cooking whole milk and beaten milk, to which eggs and sugar are added.

When it comes to eating habits, beware: most Belgians eat early, around 7pm or even earlier, and some restaurants close quite early as a result, especially outside the big cities. Outside July and August, it's common for restaurants to close after 9pm. Cafés, which also serve food, are often the best option for those who want to sample honest cuisine without breaking the bank. What's more, most ordinary cafés offer a menu of small dishes: pasta, soups, sandwiches and savoury tarts. On the other hand, if the dishes are less numerous, they are more copious.

Obviously, it is impossible to talk about Belgian cuisine without mentioning the baraque à frites or fritkot or frituur in Flemish. A bit of a cliché, of course, but inseparable from the country. If the idea of eating a cone of fries does not seem to be an initiatory experience for a French person, Belgian fries are unique because they are traditionally cooked in beef fat or tallow (sometimes called beef white or ossenwit in Dutch) giving all its crispness to the fries. They are usually accompanied by long sausage-like croquettes of meat - pork and veal - called fricadelle/frikandel. They are served with a generous amount of mayonnaise or the classic tartar, andalusian or American sauces. Mayonnaise is indeed an institution in Belgium, although a 2016 reform lowered the fat content of the product from 80% to 70% to accommodate foreign competition. If you don't feel like eating too much fat, buy caricoles, small sea snails. Unfortunately, they are not available everywhere. Those who are a bit peckish can also opt for a pistol. Most butcher shops sell them at any time of the day, and it is not impossible to eat them in some cafés, if you take a drink, of course. The pistol - a word of Liège origin - is a small crusty bread filled with cheese, ham, sausage or American.

Traditionally, most restaurants offer a number of starters that seem almost unavoidable. These include tomato and shrimp/tomaat-garnaal, stuffed with mayonnaise and shrimp, or the more bizarre and retro sweet and sour version, peach and tuna/perzikenmet tonijn, presented as half a peach stuffed with tuna and mayonnaise. There are also cheese melts, which are actually croquettes with parmesan cheese, and shrimp croquettes, served with fried parsley sprigs. In season, the menus feature delicious asparagus à la flamande, topped with a butter sauce and garnished with crushed hard-boiled egg and parsley. Alternatively, you can enjoy hearty tartines or boterhammen, large slices of bread - often wholemeal - spread with pâté, cheese, sausage, etc. Charcuterie is also popular. In addition to Ardenne ham and sausage, we also offer hunter's sausage and pâté, often made from game (such as wild boar). Boudin(pensen, beuling, bloedworst) is often eaten with potatoes and applesauce, sometimes cold or barbecued. It can be black (made from blood) or white (made from lean pork, veal and milk).

As in France, we love the ineradicable steak-frites with a variety of sauces (béarnaise, pepper or Roquefort). For those who prefer it raw, American steak is the Belgian equivalent of steak tartare, accompanied by the classic capers, gherkins and minced onions. Many Belgian dishes are served with French fries, not surprisingly, and sauces are usually richly flavored beer-based reductions. This is particularly true of the very popular carbonnade flamande. It's made from chunks of beef, simmered in a dark beer sauce, the bitterness of which is toned down with a touch of vergeoise sugar. It is often garnished with prunes. Rabbit à la bruxelloise is very similar, as it is confit with beer - preferably gueuze - and prunes. Boulets liégeois are, as the name suggests, large meatballs half beef, half pork, bound with breadcrumbs, shallots and spices, and served with real Liège pear syrup sauce. In another style, the headless bird/blindevink, is a rolled meat cutlet stuffed with minced meat, usually pork, simmered in an onion-based sauce.

Potjevleesch is a Flemish dish whose unpronounceable name means "meat in a pot". It's a very old specialty, said to have originated in the Westhoek region in the Middle Ages, although some believe it originated near Dunkirk, which explains why it's also common on tables in Northern France. It consists of chunks of meat from chicken, rabbit, pork and veal, cold and set in a lightly-vinegar jelly. Potjevleesch is usually served with French fries, the heat of which melts the jelly and releases the pieces of meat. Another Flemish dish, waterzooï, is a preparation of chicken or fish cooked in a broth with vegetables and potatoes, served topped with a creamy sauce made from the cooking broth, mixed with cream, egg yolks and a squeeze of lemon.

There are also poultry dishes such as vol-au-vent, a kind of puff pastry bite stuffed with chicken, mushrooms and small dumplings, served in Belgium with French fries once again. More classy, pheasant à la brabançonne is a hunting dish served in country cottages or in some of Brussels' prestigious restaurants, where the pheasant is braised with an endive-based garnish. Vegetables are not necessarily abundant in Belgian cuisine. However, there are a few nourishing specialties. Like stoemp, which is made from potatoes mashed with vegetables (usually carrots, leeks or cabbage) and served with sausages, bacon or sometimes fish. But it's impossible to talk about vegetables without mentioning chicory in France. The best-known dish is chicory au gratin(gegratineerde witloof), where endives are topped with a béchamel sauce and cheese. They are often wrapped in ham. And for the record, Brussels sprouts are actually a plant that was selected in the Brussels region as early as the ^17th century, with the aim of increasing yields by producing a plant that grows tall and from which the side buds are removed, Brussels already being a densely populated city at the time.

Fish and seafood are obviously very popular, and there are many recipes for freshwater fish such as Ardennes trout, stuffed with smoked ham, or eels au vert, prepared in a sauce of mixed herbs and served with bread and French fries. Alternatively, escavèche is a preparation of eels marinated in vinegar, which can be replaced by pike or trout. Rollmops are herring fillets also marinated in vinegar with onion and herbs, which are then rolled on a piece of gherkin before being eaten. Crayfish à la liégeoise are simmered in a white wine and vegetable sauce. And of course, it's impossible to miss Belgium's most popular seafood dish: moules-frites. The most common sauce is "à la marinière", based on shallot, parsley and white wine, but it can also contain cream, beer, garlic and so on, the variations being relatively endless. The term "moules parquées" ("parked mussels") refers both to bouchot mussels - i.e. farmed mussels - and to a Brussels speciality of raw mussels, served in a half-shell with a mustardy vinaigrette.

It's no surprise that Belgium and chocolate go hand in hand. The country is the world's^4th largest producer after the USA, Germany and Switzerland, which, given its small size, is quite spectacular. In 2017, Belgians were the ^2nd biggest consumers of chocolate, with almost 11 kg per capita per year, just behind their German neighbors. Even so, a large proportion of this chocolate is exported, and while the famous houses like Léonidas and Côte d'Or - founded in 1913 and 1883 respectively - are well known, there are plenty of other renowned chocolatiers like Godiva, Neuhaus, Corné Port-Royal, not forgetting of course Maison Pierre Marcolini.

The praline is an invention of the Belgian chocolate industry, and has nothing in common with the pink pralines of Lyon, for example, which are consumed in France. In Belgium, it's simply the term for individual chocolates. Of course, there are dozens of different types of chocolate: dark, white, milk with dried fruit, alcohol and so on. One of the best known is the gayette de Charleroi, a filled chocolate truffle coated in dark-tinted chocolate, a reminder of coal, the city's main source of income for over a century. Another confection is the cuberdon, a delicacy originating in the Bruges region, the recipe for which is said to have been perfected in 1873. Its distinctive conical shape and frosted texture enclose a syrupy, runny center. Traditionally flavored with raspberry, it comes in almost 40 flavors, including lemon, apple, pineapple, clementine and more. They are now more often associated with the city of Ghent.

But of course, there's more to Belgium than confectionery. The hot Liège waffle with pearl sugar, with its irresistible aroma wafting through all the shopping streets, is a must, as are the Brussels waffles - larger but much lighter than their Liège counterparts - which are a delight at teatime as well as for nibbling while strolling. They are often topped with whipped cream. Lacquemant, also from Liège, is a thin, supple, wheat-based wafer cut in half across its thickness, filled and topped with orange blossom-scented candy sugar syrup. Not unlike the Dutch stroopwafel.

In pastry shops, the shelves are lined with many goodies, but the simplest are the best: tarte au sucre, tarte au riz/rijstevlaai (filled with rice pudding), tarte à la frangipane, cramique (brioche filled with raisins), craquelin (sugar brioche) and so on. We also owe our Belgian neighbors a little cookie that has since spread far beyond their borders: speculoos. It's traditionally eaten during Advent, and especially on Saint Nicholas Day, December 6. The speculoos from Hasselt, Flanders, is much thicker and softer than the original version. More delicate is the merveilleux, a meringue and chantilly dessert, usually sprinkled with chocolate shavings, which owes its sudden popularity in France to chocolatier Pierre Marcolini.

Coffee consumption in Belgium is comparable to that in France, although Belgians seem to be a little more addicted to caffeine, since they are the world's ^8th biggest coffee consumers, with some 6.8 kg of coffee per capita per year! Coffee shops can be found all over the country. A love of coffee is reflected in one of Belgium's best-known desserts: café liégeois, a blend of coffee ice cream and cold coffee, topped with whipped cream.

Apart from chocolate, if there's one product that symbolizes Belgium, it's beer. There are over 1,000 labels for this national beverage, and every week between 200 and 300 really different varieties are created, including beers with flavors that may seem crazy, such as kiwi or banana! Unlike most beer-producing countries, Belgium has preserved its many craft breweries.

The distinctive feature of Belgian beers is, of course, their tremendous diversity. They range from light lagers to amber ales, lambics, Flemish reds, sour browns, strong ales and stouts. Most beers are bought or served in bottles rather than cans, and almost every beer has its own branded glass, sometimes uniquely shaped. And if all that wasn't enough to prove that beer is a serious thing in Belgium, in 2016, Unesco included Belgian beer culture on its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Among the multitude of Belgian beers - including classics such as Stella Artois, Jupiler, Leffe and Grimbergen - we should mention Trappist beers first and foremost. Of the twelve abbeys producing beers in Europe, 5 are Belgian. These include Chimay, of course, but also Orval, Westmalle, Rochefort and Westvleteren (Achel having lost its title of authentic Trappist after the departure of the last monks). Lambics - typical of Brussels - owe their very specific acid taste to spontaneous fermentation by wild yeasts, and are therefore not seeded. Lambics include Gueuze, Kriek, Framboise and Faro. There are also other varieties little known in France, such as bière saison, a fast-fermenting beer with a low alcohol content, generally around 4°, or bière de table, at just 1.5°, which has become rare but was served in school canteens until the 1980s.

As for wine, Belgium has a small but growing wine production. Vines have been cultivated in the flat country since the ^9th century. The drop in temperatures in Northern Europe at the end of the Renaissance, during the "Little Ice Age", led to a decline in viticulture in the region until the ^19th century. Today, there are more than 600 hectares of vineyards in Belgium: in Torgny, the country's southernmost village in Hainaut, in Trazegnies, on the slopes of the Huy slag heap, or in Villers-la-Ville, in Hageland (Flemish Brabant). The farms are generally modest in size. In the west of the country, near the French border in Hainaut, lies the largest vineyard, Domaine des Agaises, which covers 35 hectares and produces a sparkling wine that rivals the best champagnes: Rufus. Belgium has several appellations d'origine contrôlée: Hageland (1997), Haspengauw (2000) and Heuveland (2005) in Flanders and Côtes de Sambre et Meuse (2004), "vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie" and "crémant de Wallonie" (2008). Wallonia also has a PGI: Vin de pays de Wallonie (2004).