Last August when I stayed in Brussels for 3 months, my sister and I stumbled upon Le Chatelaine du Liban in one of our evening walks home from a nearby ramen shop. Our little eyes lit up completely because once we meandered into this seemingly, perpetually buzzing hive of a restaurant---we were greeted by a glass case FULL of countless options of incredibly fresh, tasty options of food.
VEGETARIANS AND VEGANS---you have found your Mecca of choices!
So we made a mental note of this joint and headed out. The problem is, in this neighborhood, on every single corner, quaint and beautiful restaurants paint the streets. Mediterranean and Lebanese restaurant choices abound. And we didn't make strong enough of a mental note. Needless to say, when I left last year, my sister was on a perpetual hunt for this restaurant, alas, to no avail.
Tonight after a 2 hour stroll around the city we started looking for a place to eat. And subconsciously we were hunting for this place, whose name we could not remember. Finally we are standing on a corner, my sister gazing at her google maps trying to see if the restaurant was in the direction of this one street we were staring down---when I looked up and stared at the restaurant across the street from us and I went: "hey! .... wait a minute ....is that it?" Lo and behold, we had found the restaurant!! And the hunt was well worth our effort. Laughing with delight, we stumbled through the doors and into our treasure trove.
Here's the deal. In the evening, this place gets busy and stays busy. The cute, charming interior is perpetually buzzing with very frantic, irritated servers. I can understand because it seems that once they get busy, the servers never quite catch fully up to the pace. I think during the day you may have better luck in catching a more relaxed pace.
You can absolutely go in and order take away though, which is what we did.
As we stared at the glass case of options---pretty much none of the males working were remotely eager to help us out. Finally a lone woman peered up at us as her hands were still moving a mile a minute and asked if she could help us. I asked about take away, she said "of course!"...-and then told me about a vegetarian plate option. You pick any 3 items in the glass case, and then she throws in either 2 falafel or 2 vegetarian omelette things.
I picked the baba ghanouj, a Smokey eggplant dish, loobyeh, 2 falafel and one of the vegetarian omelet thingies.
Holy batballs Batman. This food is INCREDIBLE. When I opened the bag once I got home I found that 2 ginormous pitas had been thrown in into of the takeaway container. HUGE.
First of all----the baba ghanouj was SO creamy and so flavorful. Sometimes you can get a bitter bite to it, this one was Smokey, creamy wonderfulness. I'm the pickiest person when it comes to hummus, but the caliber of this dip, pretty much assured me that I'd be trying the hummus next time.
Ok, as for the Smokey eggplant dish. It's basically broiled eggplant, mixed with capers, parsley, bell peppers, tomatoes, lemon, garlic---AND IMPOSSIBLE to find a name for this dish. I have been searching and searching for a recipe to recreate this dish that I found years ago but could never find a name for it. This dish is amazing. It is so flavorful and so fresh and just incredibly delightful.
The last dish of my selection of 3 was the loobyeh. Basically a tomato-ey, green bean stew. Caramelized onions, sweet paprika combine to make this dish a slightly sweet but completely comforting pop for your tastebuds.
Ok, I am not a fan of falafel, but this falafel was really perfect. A crunchy exterior gives way to a really flavorful and fluffy center of goodness. And the vegetarian omelette was SO GOOD! Chock full of veggies and so flavorful. Grant it---to heat they up, these puppies go straight into a deep fried for a few seconds. Lol...
All in all, the franticness of the staff is the only thing that made me take off one star. Usually that doesn't bother me, but these guys just seem super on the grind and flustered when you meander onto their path. But the food?---5 Star all the way! read more