![]() ![]() Cookie Monster in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks is my favourite. Sesame Street colouring book pages inspired by works of art. How much of a drink's flavour comes down to what we expect from it? And how much of our tasting vocab is only there performatively because it's what we think we're supposed to say? It's something we talk about a lot at home when we're laughing at Untappd reviews. I really enjoyed this article by Tasting Beer author Randy Mosher about the flavour of stout. Is this what being grateful for the bare minimum feels like? Well anyway, I want them all. Ottolenghi has a new series of "Test Kitchen" books coming out and forgive me for gushing - they are beautiful and I love how this press release talks about his whole team creating and compiling their content. (Their amazing drummer in the video is Cat Myers, standing in for Martin while he was ill) Here's Mogwai live for KEXP in 2017 to brighten up your Thursday aft. Why would you mind standing at the bar?Īre you still listening to Ritchie Sacramento non-stop? Me too. And anyway, you’re in a beautiful art deco Brussels bar with a glass of Saison Dupont, the snow falling (okay, it was light drizzle) outside on the street. A tiny dining room on an unassuming street where anyone, including myself, is happy to wait an hour or more for a table. Lambic on tap, geuze in the gravy, bottles of beer chosen from tiny script on the menu and taken down from the attic especially. ![]() On top of it all though, the best thing: we visited Nüetnigenough.īeef or lamb stewed for hours in beer-rich sauces, falling from the bone into creamy mashed potato. We sat outside a tourist trap restaurant for mussels, wrapped in blankets in the freezing cold as the Christmas market twinkled on Place Sainte-Catherine. We got drunk and played cards in Moeder Lambic, and visited Brasserie Cantillon where I videoed them trying lambic for the first time. This was a special trip, because I was with friends I don’t normally get to see. Last time I went it was Christmastime, and a 100ft tree in the Grand-Place towers over every memory of it, a weird beacon of good times decorated in oddly prophetic Ambulance-blue lights. My impressions of it have been flicked through hundreds of times over lockdown like a well-worn scrapbook of brown cafés. Since then I can’t remember how many times I’ve been back. But I remember what that beer tasted like. There is a photo of me holding the goblet and looking out of the window at the street, from a lifetime so distant I barely recognise the person in it. It was also the first place I ever drank a sour beer, a Leifman’s kriek brut in the Delirium Café. It was the first place I’d ever heard of native yeasts, not that I understood or cared about them at the time. My first trip to Brussels, like most people’s, was an education in beer. And perhaps, yes, the pavements on the high streets are wonky with paving stones that flip up and splash you with filthy rainwater as you pass… hang on, I’m meant to be talking about why I love and miss the place. As Eoghan Walsh points out time after time in his excellent book Brussels Beer City, the local council has an obsessive desire to wipe out any and all historic personality from the place. Grey? Ugly? Had we been to the same city? Taken aback, I had nothing to add, and we took our coffee mugs and went back to our desks. ![]() I suppose I was excited to finally have somebody to talk about beer with at work. “Oh, I love Brussels!” I squealed enthusiastically at a colleague a few years ago, when she told me she had to head over there for some reason or another. ![]()
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