Discover Brussels' Asian restaurants
Avoid weeks of aimless backpacking, bad beer and scary bed bugs by relocating your self-discovery journey to Asian restaurants in Brussels, advises The Bulletin food critic Mike Blyer
Paul Theroux wrote The Great Railway Bazaar sometime in the lead-up to 1975. He left his young family in a grey 1970s London and set out on a round-the-world, overland train trip. What should have been an experience of a life-time became less jolly as the solitude of long-distance travel, homesickness and an uneasy guilt about abandoning his family took over. He returned to discover that his wife had had an affair.
Yann Martel, in his novel Self, recounts that “travelling alone [is] the only way to travel, if you can stand the regular loneliness, which often I couldn’t” and Alain de Botton, in The Art of Travel, mentions his disappointment on arrival in Barbados, with the realisation that “I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island”.
Travel can suck. We fling ourselves halfway across the globe only to miss home. On our return, we eulogise the holiday for about five minutes, start to plan the next one, and repeat, on and on, ad nauseum.
We envy those who claim to have had life-changing experiences abroad, the horse hair brigade who live proudly on US$5 a night in far-flung war zones and dysentery hotspots, or the next-big-thing hunters who pay thousands to be deprived of comfort in ashrams, retreats and health spas in the name of detoxification and spiritual awakening. Never mind that we secretly think they’re bonkers.
Back in the day I spent about five months schlepping around Asia. I selfishly left my long-term girlfriend at home, forcing her to take a lodger to cover the rent, and went off on a voyage of “self-discovery”. I was going to osmotically absorb the ancient Eastern cultures of Siam and Indochina and return reinvigorated, healthy, toned and wise.
What I did, in fact, was drink cheap beer for five months in the company of slightly blotchy Europeans and fight the niggling sensation that I was wasting time. I also developed an acute case of dipsomaniac hypochondria, and a very deep passion for Thai and Vietnamese cuisine.
We are blessed in Brussels by an overabundance of excellent and reasonably priced Asian eateries. Admittedly, for every good one, there’s an awful one, and it’s not always easy to sort the belles from the lady boys, so here are three which live up to their promises. Ixelles boasts Chez Saly close to the Châtelain square.
The curries are spicy, the decor a pastiche of everything Buddhist, and there are no bells or whistles or anything else to detract from the bloody good, piping hot and authentically Thai food on your plate. Starters are about €6 while mains cost between €12 and €15. They do an even cheaper set lunch and I eat there about three times a month, which is high praise.
The slew of oriental eateries in front of the Bourse and around Place Sainte-Catherine can be overwhelming. If you go to Au Lotus Thai on Rue Jules Van Praet and have the noodles with pork you won’t regret it. Ditto any of the soups at Hong Hoa in the Saint-Géry quarter. This miniscule restaurant serves up consistently good Vietnamese food in huge portions at bargainbasement prices, and although it’s not always easy to get a table at lunchtime, it’s well worth the wait.
In fact, there are probably so many good, cheap Asian restaurants in Brussels that you could do a five-month voyage of self-discovery around all of them at a price lower than an airline ticket, and sleep in your own bed every night. Now that’s a way to travel.
You can contact Mike Blyer at mikeblyer@gmail.com
FIND IT:
Chez Saly
131 Rue de Livourne/Livornostraat, Brussels,
tel 02.646.03.10
Hong Hoa
10 Rue du Pont de la Carpe/Karperbrug, Brussels,
tel 02.502.87.14
Au Lotus Thai
33 Rue Jules Van Praet/straat, Brussels,
tel 02.502.07.29
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Comments
What is Asian ?
The author doesn't seem to know that India is a part of Asia :).