Belgium
The true home of frites, waffles, world-beating beer and pralines — a small country with a monumental appetite.
Join the queue at a friterie, take your paper cone of twice-fried frites under a generous blob of mayonnaise, and don't get the Belgians started on who really invented the chip (them, they'll insist, not the French). Belgian cooking has been summed up as 'French food in German quantities' — the finesse of the recipes, the sheer size of the plates — and the national dish makes the case: moules-frites, a great steaming pot of mussels in white wine, an empty shell pressed into use as tongs, with yet more fries alongside.
Beyond it the country braises beef slowly in beer for stoofvlees, bakes endives in ham and cheese, and treats pudding as a birthright — light, lacy Brussels waffles under a snowfall of sugar, dense Liège ones studded with molten pearl sugar, and pralines from chocolatiers who work like jewellers. Above all there is the beer: a brewing superpower where six Trappist monasteries still brew under legal protection, alongside the wild, sour lambics and cherry krieks that ferment on the breeze around Brussels.
- moules-frites (mussels & fries)
- frites (with mayonnaise)
- stoofvlees / carbonade (beef braised in beer)
- chicons au gratin (endive & ham)
- boulets à la liégeoise (meatballs)
- Brussels & Liège waffles
- Trappist beer & pralines
