Le Roi du Poulet
A restaurant doesn’t need fuss and feathers to be good. In fact, sometimes you’ll find the best grub at the most basic eateries, writes food critic Mike Blyer
As expatriates in Belgium we like to moan. It might be the dog turds littering the street, it could be the Kafkaesque complexities of the public administration and the taxes associated with its smooth running, or perhaps it’s the skewed concept of customer service we experience in our daily dealings with shopkeepers, bus-drivers and telephone operators.
“Don’t you want me to come back?” we mutter incredulously as we’re told by the grumpy counter clerk that they are “unable to help”, even though all it would take to accommodate our small request is not even a bending of the rules but just a little individual imagination.
I was once told I couldn’t have a sandwich without mayonnaise, as it would cast into disarray the careful stock-taking and billing procedures in place at the corner delicatessen in question. How to account for the extra spoonful of mayonnaise left in the jar at the end of the day if they couldn’t spread it on my sandwich? In the end, with much resistance (them) and patronising glibness (me), we compromised. I had the sauce on the side and left it behind.
Good service in restaurants is one of my absolutes. I can have a perfectly good meal at home, cooked by my perfectly good wife, and even get out of the washing up if I’ve been perfectly good all week. Nevertheless I choose to come to your restaurant for the experience, which can be reasonable food and excellent service, but not excellent food and rotten service.
Le Roi du Poulet is not a person (as far as I am aware, although I’m sure there will be several rustic types who lay claim to that title the world over, and probably a whole chain of American restaurants founded by an eccentric Texan individual who styles himself ‘The King o’ Chicken’.) Instead it is a Portuguese restaurant just off Place Flagey that I’ve been going to for a few years.
In appearance it’s not dissimilar to a 1970s tavern on the Costa del Chav, more aptly called the Algarve. The five big screens are a recent addition, which ramp up the atmosphere on the nights when Benfica play Porto, but otherwise should be forgotten.
The food is traditional Portuguese, generous and hardy. It’s not always good, but I like to think that the occasional fail adds a frisson of excitement to an otherwise dependable and solid meal out. This weekend’s chargrilled chicken was more char than grilled, and the three desultory pieces of sad lettuce that it sat on did nothing for the plate or the palate. On occasion I’ve had exceptionally good bacalhau in here.
Bacalhau is a Portuguese staple of salted cod prepared in various ways, or three in the case of the Roi du Poulet.
The rest of the menu is split into meat and fish. And that’s what you get – honest, no-frills and stomach-filling meat or fish. You won’t leave hungry. The clientele is largely Portuguese, which is recommendation enough for me.
It’s somewhere you can go and eat without worrying about matching stripes with checks, you can wear jeans and a lumberjack shirt and the waitress won’t judge you. While it’s difficult to eat out in Brussels for less than €35 a head nowadays, you can take your entire family, have some basic grub and a bottle of wine, and leave with change from a hundred-euro note.
And the service? It’s good.
You can contact Mike Blyer at mikeblyer@gmail.com
FIND IT:
Le Roi du Poulet,
16 Rue Belvedere,
Brussels,
tel 02.646.56.26
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