I don’t quite recall how I heard about SAN BRUXELLES. What I did recall, though, was feeling really excited at eating some modern dishes inspired by Asian flavours. Enough of traditional hearty Flemish food! I did enjoy all that....
DIEPPE – scallops, sea urchin emulsionI don’t quite recall how I heard about SAN BRUXELLES. What I did recall, though, was feeling really excited at eating some modern dishes inspired by Asian flavours. Enough of traditional hearty Flemish food! I did enjoy all that. However, it was time to change things up again and particularly get some vegetables into me that weren’t in the form of fries.
Luckily for us, Brussels is small and most things were within walking distance from our hotel. We enjoyed walking through the old town square and weaving through cobbled streets on our way to SAN BRUXELLES. The restaurant seemed to be on a really cool street, filled with other eateries we would’ve loved to have tried.
PARIS – Textures of carrots[On a side note, we really liked our hotel ‘9 Hotel Sablon’ in Brussels, but overall we didn’t really enjoy Brussels. One contributing factor, unfortunately, was that all the museums we wanted to go to were closed for their annual staff day. This was not announced on the websites when we checked. So we were disappointed and left with not much to do. While there are some cool new buildings around, we found most of the old part of town quite derelict, run down, full of graffiti and dirty.]
Bread and butterSAN BRUXELLES has a really whimsical feel to it. There is bar seating downstairs, but upstairs it’s almost like you’ve entered an Alice in Wonderland-esque space with lots of muted pastel tones, wooden furniture and fake vines creeping along the walls and ceiling.
We sat down upstairs, and again we were the first to arrive at around 7pm. Like I mentioned in my last post, people must eat rather late here!
At SAN BRUXELLES they serve a 5 course tasting menu for €65, plus an extra course available at €12.
Here’s what we ate:
Complimentary bread & butter
DIEPPE – Scallops, sea urchin emulsion – What a wonderful dish to start our meal. I was so impressed with this, with the thinly sliced raw scallops in particular. I don’t usually like sea urchin but the flavour was really delicate and it worked so well together.PORTOMUŃIOS – Mackerel, cabbage, seaweed – While DS really liked this dish, I really don’t like mackerel so unfortunately this was not great for me. I could appreciate that it was a beautiful dish but mackerel is just too fishy for me!LANDES – Beetroot, smoked duck, walnuts – It’s been a while since I’d had beetroot due to sticking to a low FODMAP diet! I really enjoyed this dish and felt the sweet taste of the beetroot worked really well with the duck. It was a great alternative to the usual duck and citrus pairing. LIERNU – Seasonal vegetables and oil of the time (Extra €12) – When I saw this extra dish I knew I had to have it. It’s so hard to get fresh veges whilst travelling! This dish was everything I’d hoped for – clean and fresh. I’m not sure what ‘oil of the time’ meant but the subtle flavour of the accompanying sauce didn’t overpower the vegetables which was great!JERUSALEM – Venison, Jerusalem artichoke, cacao – My first experience of the venison + cacao combination was at Sepia in Sydney, many years ago. It took me by surprise back then and I didn’t enjoy it. I was able to prepare myself a bit better this time round and thought it worked quite well! I think the key is to make the cacao quite subtle so as not to overpower the dish. This was definitely the heaviest dish of our meal.PARIS – Textures of carrots – When I read this on the menu I wasn’t sure if it was dessert or not. Carrots? Like carrot cake? The actual dish took us both by surprise and we LOVED it! There’s some sesame snap-type things, and I think it was candied carrot…I’ll leave the rest as a surprise for you to taste one day!DIEPPE – scallops, sea urchin emulsion
PORTOMUŃIOS – Mackerel, cabbage, seaweed
LANDES – Beetroot, smoked duck, walnuts
LIERNU – Seasonal vegetables and oil of the time (extra €12)
JERUSALEM – Venison, Jerusalem artichoke, cacao
JERUSALEM – Venison, Jerusalem artichoke, cacao
PARIS – Textures of carrots
As far as I can tell, the names of the dishes refer to places or regions. Except for Portomuńios…if anyone can shed some light on that, that’d be much appreciated!
We had such a wonderful time at SAN BRUXELLES and would highly recommend it to anyone going to Brussels. I’m sure the dishes will be completely different but still totally creative and delicious like it was for our meal!
SAN BRUXELLES
RUE DE FLANDRE 19
1000 BRUSSELS
BELGIUM
http://sanbxl.be/en/
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