Dinners are
served at separate tables, under Japanese umbrellas, and the cooking is
excellent; but it is as well to secure a seat as near to the main
building as possible, to overcome that objection to _al-fresco_
meals--cold dishes. The wines are good, and M. Artus has some fine
Ayala--'93, in magnums--unless it is all drunk by now. There must be
something about the cellars of these out-door places peculiarly
favourable to beer, for no pale ale in the world can compare with that
drawn at the bars of the Epsom grand-stand, and in Belgium there is no
bottled Bass so fresh and palatable as that which one gets at the
Laiterie.
If my friend were staying in Brussels longer than a week, the other
restaurants to which I might take him would be the Taverne Royale, at
the corner of the Galeries Saint Hubert, where some real 1865 cognac can
be had at 75 centimes the glass; the Freres Provencaux, in the Rue
Royale; the Restaurant de la Monnaie (a large place, generally noisy,
with not the most rapid of service); Stielen's, in the Rue de l'Eveque;
and the Taverne Restaurant des Eleveurs on the Avenue de la Toison d'Or.
At the Taverne de Londres, in the Rue de l'Ecuyer, there is always a
fine cut of cold roast beef with English pickles.
On Wednesdays all the Brussels restaurants are crowded, it being Bourse
day, and in a wide sense "market" day, when over 5000 strangers, mostly
men, come into the city from provincial towns.
Pages:
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125