A Few of My Favourite Things: Belgian Beer Cafes
~In Search of Belgium’s “Best” Beer Cafes~
Belgium is home to countless beer cafes ranging from hole-in-the-wall locales in the working-class districts of Brussels to beer pilgrimage destinations like In de Vrede, Westvleteren’s beer café in West Flanders. Many lovers of Belgian beer would likely nod their heads in agreement at the mention of places like Cantillon or Moeder Lambic, but any selection of Belgium’s “best” beer cafes is bound to be a highly subjective enterprise. Even the very notion of a list of favourite cafes is a fool’s errand: Ask me tomorrow and my list will be different.
A Sense of Enchantment
What is it that makes a brewery, beer hall, beer garden, or beer cafe special? Is it a particular beer? An extensive beer list? The ambience? For me, it’s the intangible qualities of a place or experience, those sometimes only dimly conscious sensations that imprint themselves in my memory. The colours and contours. The tastes and textures. The sounds and scents. The friends who are part of the experience. The people I meet along the way. Sure, the beer’s a key element, but it’s not the sole reason I enjoy a particular place or why I remember it twenty years later.
Rather, it’s a sense of enchantment, a sense of being transported. It’s why I prefer Volkscafé de Cam in the town of Gooik to some of the more famous Belgian beer cafes. Few beer memories compare to sharing a board of gueuze and lambic with a close friend on a late Sunday morning as the place filled up with locals returning from church. It’s also a kind of magic that suffuses places like Verschueren in Brussels or 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, where I had my first-ever sip of lambic. It’s the sense of wonder in these time-worn places where many a social or solitary beer drinker has occupied this very space before me.
Belgian Beer Cafes: A Few Highlights
And so, in no particular order, here’s an introduction to ten of my favourite Belgian beer cafes.
Poechenellekelder, Brussels
You could easily spend days in Brussels without coming close to exhausting your possibilities for memorable beer experiences. One of my faves in this city of endless beer is the quirky — and, for English speakers, devilishly difficult-to-pronounce — Poechenellekelder.
A one-time puppet theater, Poechenellekelder hides out in plain view across from one of the most famous fountains in the world. Though it gets its share of tourists, many of whom sun themselves on the large terrace that spills out toward Mannekin Pis, Poechenellekelder is resolutely unique. The wood-toned interior is given over to a collection of dolls and puppets, including renditions of the famous kid outside. But that’s not all. The tavern is a riot of old comic strips, old photographs and engravings, beer signs, old musical instruments, and even a vintage sled and crossbow.
Poechenellekelder is also a legit beer establishment. You can choose from over twenty bottlings of gueuze, lambic, kriek, and other fruit beers. Nearly half of these hail from Cantillon, so if you don’t have time for a beer pilgrimage, you’ll find bottlings like Foufoune, Saint-Gilloise, and Lou Pepe. Poechenellekelder’s remaining 100+ bottlings are divided into brown, amber, blond, and Trappist. That should keep you busy for the evening.
*Fun fact: Poechenelle can mean both buffoon and wooden puppet. The thread that ties these seemingly unrelated meanings together is the seventeenth-century Italian commedia dell’arte, a theater form characterized by masked figures representing social stereotypes.
De Garre, Bruges
Clichés about hidden gems aside, there are hidden gems, and then there are truly hidden gems. De Garre is the latter. The address is simple enough — De Garre 1 — but it’s more like a clue. You have to look hard for this place tucked away to the southeast of the Grote Markt. The small passage, wide enough for two people, is like an Edinburgh alley: blink and you’ll miss it.
Once you find De Garre after a few trips around the block, you’ll be reluctant to leave this classy drinking establishment. Dark beams overhead buckle slightly, a testament to their age. Red-framed windows and exposed brick exude warmth, while white tablecloths and classical music add a dash of elegance.
The beer list consists of more than a hundred beers covering all the major Belgian bases. But the beer you really want is the house beer, the De Garre Tripel. Brewed for De Garre by Van Steenbourg of Piraat fame, this effervescent Tripel packs in floral-spicy aromas with honey, pear, and banana custard on the palate. What makes the beer all the more special is its presentation: It comes in a unique thick-stemmed glass and is served with a side of cubed cheese, all atop a platter covered with a doily.
Pelikaan, Antwerp
Antwerp offers some of the best beer cafes in the country for beer travelers willing to venture beyond the well-trodden path between Brussels and Bruges. Cosmopolitan yet compact, Antwerp is the kind of place where you don’t have to walk far to find an excuse to take a break from all that dazzling art and architecture.
A fine place to do just that is Pelikaan on the eastern edge of the Grote Markt and in the shadow of the magnificent Our Lady. You can’t miss it: a neon sign stretched across a black cornice above stained glass windows spells out the name of the café.
Pelikaan was lively when I first visited on that summer afternoon some years back, the vibe exuding a welcoming neighbourhood feel. Young and old crowded together at tables and in front of the bar at this classic brown café: folks in their mid-30s catching up over a quick drink; a weathered guitarist with a well-worn cowboy hat; an intellectual type with a flowing mane of grey hair offsetting his black attire; an older couple sharing a drink and perhaps a memory or two. It’s this kind of flora and fauna that has kept me coming back since.
Magenta walls brighten the atmosphere, with ample sunshine flooding in through the feature windows and back door that opens out onto a small outdoor seating area. Décor is straightforward: beer signs. What more do you need? Maybe a beer. It’s Antwerp. I’ll take a De Koninck.
De Dulle Griet, Ghent
Check out Ghent’s majestic Gothic St. Baafskathedral (St. Bavo’s Cathredral) and the nearby the belfry before potentially knocking yourself out for the day at one of the city’s many watering holes. After you’ve climbed the tower for a splendid city vista, head over to the Vridjdagmarkt with its stately step-gabled facades. There you’ll find De Dulle Griet nestled amid the facades along the southwest side of the square.
De Dulle Griet is named after a cannon with a checkered history. Forged in the fifteenth century, the Dulle Griet (Mad Margaret) was deployed in 1452 during the siege of Oudenaarde, a town known to latter-day beer drinkers as the home of Liefmans and epicenter of Oud Bruin.
Like the cannon, this classic beer café is a bit “mad,” a quirky mix of bric-a-brac décor crowding the walls and dangling from the ceiling, everything from beer signs and scary animal heads to wagon-wheel chandeliers. Cheerfully whimsical atmosphere aside, the staff here take beer seriously. The beer menu is more like a tome, with around 500 beers listed in alphabetical order. Vintages of Orval sit side by side with offerings from breweries such as De Struise, De Dochter van der Korenaar, and several dozen others you may never have heard of.
Stumped by the overwhelming choices? Just order the house beer, Max, and partake of one of the more peculiar tavern customs in Belgium. Max is served in a tall, bulbous-bottomed glass held upright by a wooden stand similar to the contraption used to serve Pauwel Kwak. The whole apparatus isn’t cheap to make, and past customers were prone to five-finger discounts, so De Dulle Griet now requires a rather ingenious deposit when you order: one of your shoes.
La Brocante, Brussels
One of the things I love most about beer cafes in Brussels is that it’s hard to go wrong. You’ll almost always find at least a handful of decent beers on any given menu beyond the ubiquitous mainstream brands. And the places themselves have character to spare.
La Brocante in the vibrant Marolles district is a case in point. It’s a place that brings together regulars with other Belgians and the occasional tourist visiting the area’s bustling shops. Once solidly working-class, the Marolles district is now dotted with artisanal butchers and cheese shops, vintage clothing stores, wine shops, creperies, antique dealers, and, of course, beer cafes.
La Brocante’s very name (second-hand shop) connects it with the flea market across the street, as does its interior design aesthetic of old beer signs, figurines, and trinkets. With its wood paneling, yellow-hued lighting, and well-worn tables and chairs, it’s the kind of café that wouldn’t be out of place in a French new wave film.
The food menu covers the Belgian beer food classics, including stoemp (a hearty mashed or puréed potato dish) and carbonnade/stoofvlees (Flemish beef stew). Beers on tap are fairly pedestrian, but the bottle list really shines. More than 70 offerings run the gamut from classics like Saison Dupont and Rochefort 10 to gueuzes from the likes of Hannsens, Girardin, and Tilquin. In between, you’ll find beers from newer breweries like Brasserie de la Seine and Hof ten Dormaal.
Like the flea market across the street, La Brocante opens bright and early. If you’re thirsty enough, you can even get your beer fix at 6:00 a.m. if that’s how you roll.
Fonteintje, Kortrijk (Courtrai), West Flanders
Kortrijk might not be the first beer town that comes to mind in a province that includes Bruges, the hop town of Poperinge, and beer pilgrimage sites like Westvleteren. But in this compact regional center home to an eclectic array of beer cafés, you won’t have to walk far for liquid sustenance.
Take a moment during your beer wanderings to visit the white-washed buildings surrounding Kortrijk’s peaceful béguinage before heading to ’t Fonteintje, a beer café with a history to match. The street corner on which the tavern finds itself was the scene in medieval times of a stockade where criminals were locked up in shackles or executed by public hanging.
Today, a table by the window at the front of the house rewards you with a more subdued but no less imposing spectacle: the stately Broeltorens (Broel Towers) bridge across the Leie River. Behind you, the bar area and back room recede into the shadows, as if painted in chiaroscuro. As for the beer list? It’s modest for Belgium, but you’re sure to find something to tickle your fancy, from well-known offerings such as Duchesse de Bourgogne to local beers like Ename’s Abdijbier Dubbel.
Kulminator, Antwerp
Art abounds in Antwerp, home of Rubens and home to one of Europe’s most impressive Gothic cathedrals. Antwerp is also a city that takes seriously the art of beer.
If you had to visit only one drinking establishment in Antwerp, make it Kulminator, a testament to haute beer culture. Ignore all the online reviews that miss the point. Complaints that the beer is served “well past its prime.” Complaints about classical music. Complaints about the rude owner who serves his beer too warm.
After more than four decades tending his garden, the owner seems to have soured on anyone but regulars. His first question when he finally opened the door after we rang three times: “Are you here to drink or to taste?” The semantics of this question are subtle, and your answer serves as a shibboleth. Choose wisely. The question itself encapsulates the owner’s frustration with a new crop of beer drinkers who don’t seem to understand what he and his wife had set out to do, an expression of cynicism regarding the “tickers” who just want to check off another “classic” establishment on their bucket list.
So don’t be put off by the sphynx-like riddles you might encounter at the door. You’ll be handsomely rewarded for your patience with this wonderfully irascible archiver of fine beers. And hurry to this snapshot of a bygone era before he and his wife retire.
Café Hanekeef, Mechelen
With its magnificent St. Rumbold Cathedral, historic béguinage quarters, and vibrant squares, Mechelen is well worth the mere 30-minute train ride from Brussels. Mechelen is also home to a dense concentration of beer cafes that exude a charm you just won’t find in many of today’s sleek but anodyne establishments.
Hanekeef, the city’s oldest beer cafe, lies to the east of the center and in the shadow of one of Mechelen’s many churches. This dark-paneled and low-beamed place is the kind of neighbourhood hub where you’ll soon be friends with everyone sitting around you.
Likenesses of roosters are everywhere you look — figurines on the ledges, prints on the walls, and even a colourful bas-relief on a door at the back. The building started life as a chicken farmers’ market, and cages housing cockerels for cockfights were stored here. Hence all the rooster motifs. No one seems to know when the place became a beer café, but the server told me that it has existed in its current form since the 1950s. Back then, these “brown cafes” were the center of social life in the city, not unlike the pub in Britain or the Wirtshaus in Central Europe.
Since you’re in Mechelen, opt for Het Anker’s Maneblusser Mechels Stadsbier, a lively blond ale with subtle Belgian yeast notes of pear and baking spice. For more on what a Maneblusser is, see “Mechelen: Het Anker Brewery and Classic Beer Cafes.”
Café Vlissinghe, Bruges
Bruges’ narrow alleys conceal many a hidden oasis where you can relax after taking in the towering belfry, the languid canals, and all that medieval architecture.
One such place is Café Vlissinghe in the St. Anna district. Founded in 1515, Vlissinghe is the oldest tavern in Bruges. It’s also one of the more charming places in a country renowned for its charming drinking spots, the kind of place that didn’t adopt modern beer taps until the 1960s. (Prior to that, the publican went to the cellar to tap each beer from the barrels stored there.)
Old portraits and engravings line the walls underneath a ceiling held aloft by heavy wooden beams, and an old-fashioned heating stove exudes good will. Legend has it that the first owners of Café Vlissinghe, “Old Teunis and his wife,” lived to be a hundred years old and died on the same day. Their portrait hangs on the wall to the upper-right of the fireplace. An oil-on-wood painting in the arch above the dining room entry bears witness to the region’s maritime history.
Meals are hearty and satisfying, running the gamut from simple bistro food like quiche and croque monsieur to tapas with boudin blanc. The beer menu here isn’t as extensive as it is at places like ’t Brugs Biertje on the other side of town, but it covers all the national greatest hits with a sprinkle of local flavour (Halve Maan, Fort Lapin).
When you’re done soaking up the ambience of Vlissinghe, be sure to explore the quiet alleys of St. Anna along with the windmills along the canal before returning to the center of the action.
De Kring, Lembeek
De Kring is one of my all-time faves. And it was a total accident that we even ended up there. A friend and I had taken the train to Lembeek in search of a beer place much more famous: Brouwerij Boon. Boon we found, and even got to have a look around. But it was getting late in the day. Where might we find a sip or two of some gueuze or kriek? Not far from the gates of Boon and just off Lembeek’s small town square was the answer.
With its wood paneling and diffused light, De Kring is one of those old-style taverns that feels like it just stepped out of a film from the 1950s. Fittingly, given its location, the cafe also presides over an excellent selection of Boon beverages. De Kring evokes a bygone era when locals of all ages gathered in the local tavern for their daily drink, a kind of trip back in time. Go there before time catches up to it.
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If you’ve spent even a day in Belgium, you surely have a favourite beer café or two. Tell us about them in the comments!
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Related articles:
Imbibing Beer and Flemish Splendour in Ghent
Beer Cafes and Bollekes: Beer for a Day in Antwerp
In the Land of Flemish Red-Brown Ale
Where the Wild Beers Are: Brussels and Flemish Brabant
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