All posts tagged: Brussels

#168 Vegan options at The Sister, Brussels

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restaurant review #168 – The Sister is a small cafe in the heart of Brussels, in an alley leading to the Grand Place (the central market place, where the city hall is). The alley is called the ‘Vlees & Broodstraat’ by the way (the meat and bread street). The Sister has a nice selection of vegan options, clearly indicated on the menu. The café also offers a wide variety of Belgian beers. Here is a part of the menu, with vegan options clearly indicated: We were here for an early dinner, before going to a music show at the nearby Ancienne Belgique. This is what we had: sesame lentil falafel, comes with soup (12€) sweet wrap (6€) We had very mixed feelings about the food. The sweet wrap was very cheap (6€), but this was not the ‘hearty’ sweet wrap that I had in mind when ordering. It came on a sort of cabbage or lettuce leaf, and was hardly ‘wrapped’ at all, but held together with a string. A strange combination with the sweet peanut …

Our visit to Veggieworld 2017, Brussels

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Veggieworld is an international vegan fair, that has been organised since 2011, in 8 different European countries. In October 2017, it was organised in Brussels for the first time. Veggieworld was located in Tour and Taxis. Nicely renovated old industrial buildings on the north side of Brussels. Parking just next door (a bit expensive, 7 euro, whether one was there for half an hour of half a day didn’t matter), good facilities (accessible toilets). Bright place, with high ceilings. It was unclear to us at first – going by the name – whether this was a vegan or vegetarian fair (it is vegan). We feel “Veganworld” would be a much more appropriate, clearer and better name. Veggie usually refers to vegetarianism, not veganism, so that is confusing. And using the word veggie instead of vegan makes ‘vegan’ less known and even sound more extreme (see our post: just say the word: vegan!). Admission was 8euro pp (10 euro on the day itself), which we felt was a reasonable price. Of course a free festival like …

#101 Waiting for the Eurostar. Nice fastfood lunch at Greenway, train station Brussels

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Restaurant review #101 – Reminder – GIVEAWAY to celebrate 100 restaurant reviews & 3 years The Bruges Vegan. Greenway is a Belgian vegetarian brand (restaurants and products) and was founded by Paul Florizoone in the mid nineties. The first Greenway restaurant opened in Ghent in 1996 and I vividly remember it opening at that time (I worked nearby and was thrilled!). Meanwhile there are three Greenway restaurants in Belgium (Ghent, Louvain and Antwerp) and a take-away/foodstall at the railway station of Bruxelles-Midi. I already blogged about the Greenway in Louvain and the Greenway in Antwerp. We stopped for lunch at the Greenway in the train station of Brussels on our way to Vegfest London (see our blog, with also a review of lectures from the intersectionality Conference HERE). We had some spare time before boarding the Eurostar to London, and were a bit anxious whether we would get any (decent) vegan food on the train ride to London, so decided to have something to eat at Greenway beforehand. Vegan options are clearly indicated on the menu. You order at the counter, …

#99 Nice quick lunch at EXKi in Brussels

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Restaurant review #99 – The Exki restaurants are part of an international chain. There are several EXKi restaurants in Belgium, most are in Brussels though (27 of them). There’s also an EXKi in the train station of Bruges. Contrary to common belief, it is not an full organic chain (the FAQ on their website states about 30% of their products are organic). The EXKi restaurants have a couple of vegan options standardly available, which are clearly indicated on the labels: sandwiches, salads, soup. Unfortunately no vegan desserts though (except for some fruit). The Exki restaurants are not for elaborate wining and dining, but more of a fastfood ‘self service’ place: you take your food from the fridges, pay at the counter, and then afterwards clean up the table. There’s also a microwave to heat your dish. You can of course also buy to take-away. A couple of weeks ao, we went to one in Brussels, Exki Agora. It is near the train station of Brussels Central (Grasmarkt – near shopping center Agora). This what we had: a mushroom soup (3,75€), a bread …

#81 – Light lunch at new veggie resto Funky Jungle, Mechelen ***

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Restaurant review #81 – Funky Jungle is a new vegetarian restaurant (bistro style) in the center of Mechelen (in between Antwerp and Brussels). It is located at the foot of St Rumbold’s cathedral. I visited Funky Jungle a couple of weeks ago for lunch with a friend. On the other side of the road, there’s a nice terrace (with robust chairs with armrests, hurray!) at the foot of the St Rumboldtower . The vegan options are clearly marked on menu, although there was some uncertainty about the burger buns being vegan or not (so we didn’t choose that). We shared a bowl of beet hummus as a starter (4,50€), it came with crackers and sourdough bread. The waitress wasn’t sure about the crackers being vegan, so we didn’t eat those (afterwards she did show us the ingredient list of the crackers, and they are vegan!). For drinks we had virgin mojitos (4,50€). The beet hummus was really nice (my photo failed miserably, I was trying to get the restaurant in the background in the photo, and as such lost focus on …

#62 Buffet at vegan restaurant Moonfood in Brussels **

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Restaurant review #62 – Moonfood is a organic vegan restaurant in the city center of Brussels, just a 5 minute walk from the main Central train station. It opened in the beginning of 2015. Moonfood started out as a raw food restaurant, but there is now also a hot buffet. We had planned a visit to Moonfood in the Spring of 2015, but despite having received confirmation by mail that the restaurant would be open that day, we arrived … at a closed door. Bummer! Second try in the Fall of 2015, and luckily this time it was open! We went on a weekday at about 5PM and worked our way uphill to the restaurant, against the constant stream of commuters on their way to the Central station, going home. — UPDATE — see below The place is very spacious, with heigh ceilings and tables widely spread across the restaurant. Lots of incoming light from the wall to wall windows. The interior breathes a ‘natural’ feel, with lots of wood and branches of trees (btw, although conspicuously looking like leather, the …

#52 Our lunch at Little Asia in Brussels ***

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Restaurant review #52 – Little Asia is well known Asian restaurant in the center of Brussels. Owner and chef is Quyên Truong Thi, who is reportedly famous for participating in several TV-cooking programs (I say reportedly, because I never watch these shows myself! – the day they become vegan, I just might 😉  ). The restaurant is just a 5 minutes walk from the stock market (La Bourse) and the concert hall Ancienne Belgique. Brussels is 100km from Bruges, and is the capital of Belgium. Little Asia has a vegetarian menu standardly available, so I mailed them with the question whether we could get a vegan menu (explaining what we do and don’t eat), and if conformed, we would like to make a reservation. The reply was that this was no problem and that we should mention it again to the staff when ordering. We were there one a Friday for lunch, with two friends (non-vegans) and the place was soon packed (full house). We asked the waitress about the use of eggs, dairy and oyster sauce or fish sauce and she …

Finding vegan goodies. A visit to British shop Stonemanor, Everberg

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Shop review #17 – Stonemanor is a large British Store, where you can find a lot of products that are regularly sold in British shops, but which may be more difficult to find in regular Belgian shops. It is in between Brussels and Leuven, on the outskirts of the community of Everberg (120km from Bruges). There’s also a Stonemanor shop in Waterloo. We were there a couple of montsh ago, on our route to Leuven (Louvain), and took some time to discover the shop. Food items are downstairs, on the first floor you can find books (no vegan cookbooks though), baking tools, culinary decoration, posters etc, and on the top floor beds and accessories (didn’t verify if any of it was vegan). To be clear: it is not a vegan shop, nor an organic shop, but since it does sell many items that are not regularly found on the Belgian market, there are also some vegan goodies to be found here that are not so common in Belgian shops. There are some vegan products available in the frozen …

Linda McCartney sausages

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We found these sausages at the British shop Stonemanor in Everberg (in between Leuven en Brussels). Stonemanor sells a variety of frozen Linda McCartney products, which are unfortunately not commonly found in Belgian shops. We were happy to also discover some items that are labelled suitable for vegans. One of the things we bought were these boxes with sausages. The sausages are wheat based, and tasted quite good. We just baked them in a pan, with some onions rings, and served them in a bun with some tomato sauce, with iceberg salad on the side. A real fast food snack. But delicious nonetheless. I wish Stonemanor was closer by, I think we would buy these on a regular basis. Linda McCartney sausages, labelled suitable for vegans 1 box with six sausages, frozen, 3,25€ bought at Stonemanor, March 2015

Sausage plaits with savoy cabbage and quinoa

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We found these sausage plaits at the British shop Stonemanor in Everberg (in between Leuven en Brussels). Stonemanor sells a variety of frozen Linda McCartney products, which are unfortunately not commonly found in Belgian shops. We were happy to also discover some items that are labelled suitable for vegans. One of the things we bought was a box with two red onion and rosemary sausage plaits. The sausages in the plaits are soy based. Preparation of the plaits is very simple: brush them with a little bit of soy milk and put them in a preheated oven (200°) for 30 to 40 minutes. We had these with savoy cabbage (from our garden!) and quinoa. With some ground cashews on top of the savoy. They were quite nice. And actually very cheap (1,75€ a piece). I wouldn’t eat these every day, or every week even, but it’s a perfect thing to have at hand in the freezer when you don’t have that much time or inspiration to really cook. Linda McCartney red onion and rosemary sausage plaits, labelled suitable …