Plates, Pubs and Pigs.

It irks me that Belgian food is not given its due hallelujah in this country. I assume it’s because not enough Belgians want to leave the motherland and bring recipes here, since they’re too busy with their national sport - eating. If there’s one thing the Belgians do right, its cuisine. The land that invented the French fry (did you know?) manages to serve up a ménage à trois of French, German and Italian flavours melded together into a distinctly fabulous taste of its own.  

As always, my interaction with food comes packaged with drama and I have memories attached to every meal I had during my stay in Belgium. Once, I was starving at lunchtime after a very long day, when my hostess announced she would be serving Endives (pronounces ‘ondeev’). ‘Endives!’ I thought excitedly. What a gloriously exotic name for a dish I imagined would be filled with sizzling goodness. She held up a large plate and my tummy groaned in anticipation. She set it down and my mouth groaned instead.

An onion.  

A single, large, penile-shaped, lettuce-y onion. 

I looked up at her in askance; perhaps she had missed something? She beamed back, interpreting my stare for amazement.  Sighing, I ate my onion, which, by the way, tasted better than I’d expected. 

If lunch was a dismal start then dinner was overkill. I showed off my complete incompetency in French by ordering something pronounced ‘Jhombone’ off the menu at a pub.  The waiter did a double take and looked at me suspiciously. “Pour vous, mademoiselle?” Was that a tinge of surprise I noted in his voice? “Oui” I sniffed, for it was the only word I knew. Minutes later he pushed out a slab of wood atop which sat an entire leg of pork larger than my barstool. My heart sank at the fact that I would now have to eat this monstrosity, since in Belgium leaving food on your plate is considered an insult. given that it all happened  quite a few years before my conscience high-kicked me into the struggling vegetarian I am today, I channelled my inner Obelix and set about eating what, frightening dimensions aside, was truly and utterly delicious. Amazingly, I managed to eat every bit, even if it did take me two hours and left me looking like the enormous pig whose leg I’d just consumed.  

One occasion had me trapped in a loo for over an hour, a trauma which the highly apologetic hostess tried to placate with a dish of frogs legs and snail that just sent me back to the toilet once I’d found out what it was. Another time I was served a fantastic lobster whose claw, thanks to my limited cutlery skills, ended up on my hostess’s head. A visit to a brewery had me, the ignorant, tasting a rackful of 15 beer varieties and singing bawdy limericks at the top of my voice on the streets of Brussels. Thank heaven the lyrics were in my mother tongue and not theirs, else I'd have been propositioned.

From meats to mussels and cheeses to chips, Belgian food is designed to turn you into a glutton. Try it out.  Just make sure you know French first.