#145 Vegan lunch at Café Manger, Louvain

restaurant review #145 – Café Manger is a brasserie/pub in the city center of Louvain, on the Oude Markt (old market). “Manger” is French for ‘to eat’, so it literally translates as a pub where you can eat.
It is right across Lebanese restaurant Karamna, where we also went to a couple of weeks ago!

interior Café Manger, Louvain

terrace in front of Café Manger, Louvain

interior, Café Manger, Louvain

We had to be in Louvain a couple of weeks ago, and just the day before we went, I saw an announcement in a vegan Belgian facebookgroep that Café Manger would standardly be serving a vegan option as a suggestion, starting the next day. In that same announcement (by one of the owners of the brasserie), it was also announced that the bread, soup of the day, and fries are vegan. And they have soy creamer for coffee.
So that was lunch planned for the next day! 🙂

We arrived rather early for lunch, and as such, we were the first ones to try to vegan option at Café Manger! 😀 We had made a reservation, but that seemed not to be necessary, plenty of space still available (this was in September though, so University classes hadn’t started again yet).

Café Manger, Louvain

We were notified that it could take a while for lunch to be served, as they were still preparing the brunoise of vegetables. Meanwhile, we had soup, which was broccoli and courgette (6€).

Soup: broccoli and courgette, Café Manger, Louvain

The main dish followed about half an hour later: courgette, stuffed with brunoise of eggplant, chestnut mushrooms and other vegetables with tomato-soycream sauce, with rice (17€).

Café Manger, Louvain

main dish, Café Manger, Louvain

The vegetables and sauce were nice, but all in all it could use some spicing. Culinairy not really very exciting, and at 17€, a bit steep.
But everything was freshly prepared, and it is nice to have another place in Louvain that serves a vegan option! (I do hope this is stil the case, because to this day, their online menu doesn’t mention any vegan options).

Toilet was downstairs, rather narrow and difficult stairs. Clean, but a bit outdated.