Ugg
Earlier this week several colleagues came in to town to prepare for a huge meeting. We met them at The Brussels Airport Sheraton to review the presentation.Our VP from the States was hit hard by jet-lag and a bad, bumpy, flight over the Atlantic. She was as hungry as a bear too. As soon as we got to a reasonable agreement on what we were going to cover in the presentation, she was off - racing through the 70's-inspired lobby with shiny, brass railings and round white bulbs - to the nearest, fastest food.
Without looking at the menu, or considering the other options available in the hotel, she marched right in to the main restaurant and anchored herself to a table for 6 like she was a planting a stake in property.
We sat down and ages later, the waiter brought us our menus. The type of menus suggesting that the restaurant considers itself very posh indeed. They must have weighed 2 pounds each. Apparently, this restaurant is the gourmet dining option in the hotel. Bien Sur.
You know the chef has it sort of wrong when there's not even one sound out of 6 people for at least 5 minutes in to reading the fancy, overdone carte. We were all a bit dumbstruck.
The descriptions were glaringly odd. If you tried your very best to write a mock posh menu, you couldn't do better than this one. We all agreed that the descriptions started normally and then went downhill or went wonky for a better term - really fast. Example: Medallions of roast pork on a bed of tarte apple confit with basil foam and pomegranate scented rice pudding. Or roasted lamb with figs, Madeira reduction and a concertina of wild mushrooms in a kumquat jus. Huh? Someone is trying waaay toooo haaard me thinks!
The other thing that was particularly odd was the that there was nothing under 20 euros on the menu. No wonder there was only one other occupied table in the place. The prices for everything: salad, starters and mains ranged from 20 - 37 euros. Outrageouss - especially for Belgium! It had better be good. Our VP said we couldn't change restaurants now as she had already stuffed two rolls in her cheeks and was sucking down her second bottled water.
I was firmly undecided when the waiter came to take the orders. In mid-sentence about a customer issue, I flipped to a page and saw the word quail. So I ordered it. I vaguely remembered it was around 25 euros.
When our food arrived. We stared at it for a full minute - well, except for the VP. (She pitch-forked her steak off the plate before the waiter got it settled on the table and I think she was almost about to eat it right off the tines). Overall our food looked like two-thirds of each order had been removed from the plate. They were tiny portions. With one exception. The lamb - a lamb shank that could easily have doubled for a club owned by a caveman named Ugg. It was enormous and wobbled on it's knuckly base between the fancy figs and mushroom sumthin's.
Mine. Well..Let me start with this. I don't think there was even 1 mouthful of food on my plate. Ok a slight exaggeration - there were at least 2 mouthfuls of grated beetroot. Half of a mouthful of quail. I almost couldn't eat it. It looked so vulnerable, like a cross between a large butterfly and a baby hummingbird that had landed on a live telephone wire after a summer storm and had been shocked of it's feathers.
I couldn't figure out how to approach this tiny,tiny,tiny thing. Maybe one can eat the bones...Um. No. I took baby nibbles with my front teeth and barely got enough food to chew 1 full rotation - not quite enough to taste the quail. The grated beetroot was fine - in that it tasted just like grated beetroot. That's it. Done. I considered the benefits of trying to eat the cayenne pepper that was dusted around the edge of the plate.
Where's the dessert menu?
Ugg - You know there's trouble when the waiter says 'Would you like to see the dessert trolley?'. 'Why yes, OoooOOOOO Yes, by Golly! A dessert trolley, How jolly!!'
As predicted, the trolley had various cakes molded into perfect rounds of that lightly-flavoured whipped cream stuff on cardboardy wafer-like tarte shells. A bowl of cut fruit, and of course something chocolatey called mousse. I went for the chocolatey. I am a chocolate mousse snob. The mousse should have a dense texture with granules of chocolate that melt on your tongue. The chocolate should be deep and serious, and not too sweet. This chocolate mousse tasted like whipped cream with chocolate aroma passing by. It was saved slightly by a generous portion of chocolate curls on top.
After dinner, I went home and made myself some toast. With butter and mixed red berry jam slathered on top. Yum
posted by Brussels Confidential @ 10:26 AM
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