Tasting menu:…read more
Cauliflower Puree Amuse Bouche
Beet Amuse Bouche
Watermelon (heirloom tomatoes, spelt, Roux des Carmes)
French Bouchot mussels (mussel consommé, spring onion, carrot, celery)
Catch of the day (cod, baby potatoes, summer vegetables, lemon thyme sauce)
Celeriac (blueberry, Nasturtium, lemon thyme sauce)
Strawberry (rhubarb, almond crumble, lemon, buttermilk ice-cream)
This was a totally unplanned visit, but we were tired of all the street junk food around Belgium (waffles, fries, mussels) and wanted something more vegetable forward. Reliva is in the heart of Bruges but seems like a total hidden gem. It's an affordable 4 (or 5) course menu, and it is very modern, European-style cuisine with a heavy emphasis on fresh, in-season ingredients.
The restaurant is owned and operated by two people, a couple. Lien Vandeputte is the chef, and she handles all of the cooking, kitchen, and menu-setting. Her partner, Cédric, does all the front of the house, including waiting tables and recommending wine pairings. They've been at this for 15+ years, and they still look very young, so they must have started when they were very young. But they run the restaurant really well.
We got one regular menu and one garden (vegetarian) menu. The only difference between these is the regular menu had two meat options (fish of the day or an in-season venison), while the vegetarian menu had a celeriac dish instead. I went with the fish, which was a cod. We also chose to do 4 courses instead of 5. The fifth course would have been a ceviche.
The menu started off with two amuse bouches. Both were interesting and quite substantial. The cauliflower puree in particular was a standout. It was just bursting with cauliflower flavor. I really am curious how she managed to pull off so concentrated of a flavor. The beet dish was a bit more traditional, but it had some really hard bits for texture, which we later found out was spelt.
The next course was the salad course, with a pretty typical fresh tomato salad. I thought this was probably the weakest course, but even this was still very well balanced. It was citrusy and acidic, and the vegetables were definitely very much in season.
The next course is a play on Belgian mussels. All the shells were already removed, so we just got a very highly concentrated bowl of consommé. As with the other dishes, it was bursting with flavor, despite being very limited in quantity.
The cod came out perfectly cooked, tender but still definitively cooked. It was seasoned well, and the soup and sauce that came with it accompanied it well. The vegetable entree with the celeriac as centerpiece was even better. It had many of the same sauce components of the cod, but the celeriac itself was extremely well cooked. We later asked how it was made, and we found out that it requires a long cook in the oven at very low temperatures. The result was an extremely tender but still tasty celeriac.
The final course was a traditional strawberry and cream dessert with the twist of adding rhubarb. The rhubarb completely made the dish, as the acidity and general fruitiness of it played well with the more classic flavor of the strawberries and cream. The almond crumble also was crucial, providing the necessary texture and fun element to the dessert.
We didn't do the wine pairings because we had both already been drinking a lot during the day (across two Belgian beer brewery tours!), but we did a nice glass of Chardonnay and also a Chenin dessert wine, which was lovely.
If we ever find ourselves back in Bruges again, I would very happily visit Reliva again and experience whatever Lien and Cédric decide to serve us.
