BELGIAN BEER CAFÉ
St. Kilda Rd
Melbourne

My memory must be failing me. Old age. A senior moment. I thought I reviewed the Belgian Beer Cafe several years ago when my father and sister came to Australia from New Zealand for my appearance on This is Your Life.

I had eaten there, pleasantly, before. But I had not been there again until recently. It is still good. Very good. Heaps of food on the menu but if you go there stay with the mussels. That’s what they do best. Better than any other restaurant in Melbourne.

They do other stuff like Belgian sausages and Flemish beef stew and duck and corned beef. And the traditional “stoemp” with potato and carrot and caramelised onion. And they have the best French fries.

But stay with the mussels. I have tried heaps of them. Gratinated on the half shell. Mornay with baked béchamel. Fresh herb and chilli bread crumb topping. And you can order a plate of various styles.

The Belgian Café serves the best mussel dishes in Australia. Ambitious and some don’t work. I tried one I didn’t like where the chilli paste overwhelmed the mollusc.

But the best way to go is to order a “ mussel pot” as they call it.

I took a friend recently who absolutely raved about a a combination that I thought was weird and unpalatable: mussels with blue cheese. It’s called, obviously, Rochefort, and the dish comprises mussels steamed with blue cheese and baby spinach. She claimed it was so good she will never order anything else.

My favourite is called Mariniere. They are mussels steamed in their own juice and sea brine with a little garlic and onion and celery and other herbs.

And then of course there is the beer. I mean, it IS called the Belgian Beer Café.

They have “ Leffe Blonde”, a white beer which they say is an “abbey beer” that goes back to the monks of 1152 and a “Leffe Brune” which is a black beer which has been brewed with roasted malt. It is a dark beauty.

And then there is the Grand Final beer. It is called Hoegaarden. I’ll let their spiel spell it out:

“Known around the world as the ‘ the top of the white beers’ the Hoegaarden history starts around 1445 in the small village of the same name.Following a secret recipe using the purest ingredients and locally grown wheat, the villagers developed the originally unfiltered white beer.”

And it works. This place is a Germanic/ Belgian beer hall in Melbourne.