Restaurant review #68 – A couple of weeks ago, we were in Hasselt and had lunch at Le Pain Quotidien. It is located in the city center of Hasselt, just a 2 minutes walk from the market square. Le Pain Quotidien (LPQ) is a world wide chain of organic bistros, founded by Belgian Alain Coumont. We already wrote a review of our visit to LPQ in the city center of Bruges, you can read that review here. Alain Coumont has recently also started a vegan branch of bistros, Le Botaniste, of which we visited the one in Ghent recently (see our review here).

Pain Quotidien is French for Daily Bread. LPQ sells a wide variety of bread over the counter, and you can also sit down for breakfast, lunch or just a coffee with some baked goodies. There’s always something vegan available and vegan items are clearly marked on the menu. Most of the breads are also vegan (see our blogpost about LPQ in Bruges).

We were there early and ordered some drinks to start with. The drinks came swiftly. 45 minutes after ordering our lunch however, while plenty of people were being served lunch, there was still no sign of our order. I went to check with one of the waitresses, and sure enough, it had gone ‘missing’ somewhere along the line. We were offered free drinks to make up for the mixup and our lunch then soon followed.

Our impressions

The avocado toast and brunch were colourful and nice. It is rather disappointing that LPQ still has no vegan bread spread available and we again were served butter with a vegan dish (the same thing happened on our visit to Bruges too). The muffin wasn’t really to get all excited about and was a bit dry (and at 4,10€, I think it is overpriced). There are normally two vegan muffins available (another one with blueberries), but at this time the apple muffin one was the only one on offer.

We liked the atmposphere of the establishment. The restaurant of Le Pain Quotidien in Hasselt is much more spacious than the one in Bruges. It’s nicely decorated and you feel as if you can breath. As in every location of LPQ, there is also a large communal table (for 10 people or more), but there are also other tables for 2 or 4 if you want to have a more private conversation. There was a section with some sort of ‘train beches’ in the back of teh restaurant (see photo), which were comfortable and allowed private conversation.
It was clean and tidy, also the toilets downstairs.
Pity about forgetting our order, but they did make up for it with free drinks.

Le Pain Quotidien Hasselt, location (180km from Bruges)
Havermarkt 12
3500 Hasselt
+32 (0)11 22 26 62

website: http://www.lepainquotidien.be/en/store/le-pain-quotidien-hasselt/

See our lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and around Bruges