Search form

menu menu

New Caféplan highlights 1,251 Brussels cafés

12:14 28/10/2015

A new map listing 1,251 cafés in the Brussels-Capital Region - including the price of a beer in each - has been unveiled.

An earlier version of the Caféplan, which dates from 2011 and highlights 455 cafés, was confined to the pentagon area, or centre of the city. The new version is the biggest map of cafés ever made, according to a press release from Caféplan Brussels. The map also contains a short summary about each of the cafés.

The map includes cafés in the City of Brussels, Saint-Josse, Ixelles, Etterbeek, Saint-Gilles and parts of Schaerbeek, Molenbeek and Forest. 200,000 copies were printed in French, English and Dutch and they will be available in 600 bars around the city.

It was created by Edmond Cocquyt (pictured) of Ghent, who spent more than a year visiting every café at least once. Cocquyt presented the brand new Caféplan on Tuesday in the presence of minister Sven Gatz.

His inventory of Brussels cafés was funded by the Brussels Br)ik service desk for students, the Brussels-Capital Region and a brewery.

Cocquyt told The Bulletin: "Three partners gave money and with that money I went to pubs and I drank all the money away. And I kept a little bit for the printing.

"We went to every street to look if there are pubs and we put them on a map. The crappy cafes, everything."

The Flemish minister for culture, youth, media and Brussels, Sven Gatz, a former director of the Belgian brewers' federation, described the project as a "Herculean operation".

He told The Bulletin: "No Belgian, no one on earth, can say he visited more than 1,200 Brussels pubs and cafes. I'm really glad that Edmond has done this. This really is a treasure of information for beer lovers, pub lovers, Brussels lovers.

"I was already a beer lover and beer connoisseur and I also published a book of Brussels cafes, but what Edmond has done with the Brussels Caféplan is really a Herculean operation because he visited them all. All seems to be 1,251."

"This is like a phone book; it is not pleasant to read and there is no digital version," says Cocquyt, who does not rule out the possibility of an app, should he come up with the necessary funding.

Written by Richard Harris, Robyn Boyle