The Greasy Spoon | Food & Culture

Belgian Blues...

 

 

The first thing you notice about Belgium is the driving. It's utterly insane. I'm not being unfair, because I liked Belgium, especially the food- which was superb. But by God, once you cross the border you take your life into your hands. The autoroutes are peppered with deep, crater-like pot-holes and weed-like triffids. Not much fun when you hit them at 120k an hour- which is the sort of speed most Belgian drivers seem to think is on the slow side.

Secondly, the roads are full of rickety white vans, driven by intense, long-haired, Goth-like individuals- meandering at speed from one lane to the other. You'll see lots of these in your rear-view mirror- especially as they're about to ram you from the derrière. Enough...I liked the place. The good news is that the food is universally excellent in Belgium. I've even heard it said that the food in Belgium is better than in France. Certainly, at the various low-key places we stopped off at, the food was fab.

 

 

We found a simple cafe in the square at Ypres- opposite the old Cloth Hall. This famous Medieval building was almost completely destroyed in the First World War, and then rebuilt in the 1920's' though, apparently, was only completed in the 1960's. We ordered the national dish: moules, pommes frittes, and mayonnaise. I was interested to see that the Belgians added chopped leeks, chopped celery, and carrots (cut into tiny julienne) to their liquor. Although ours was based on a dry white wine, I gather they also use Belgian beer as a substitute. Belgian beer is one of the reasons to visit Belgium. It's lovely stuff; and oh so superior to that fizzy water they call "beer' in the U S of A.

Trappist beers are of interest. For a beer to qualify for this category, the entire production process must be carried out by, or supervised by, Trappist monks on the site of a monastery. Only seven monasteries currently meet this qualification, six of which are in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The current Trappist producers are Achel, Chimay, Koningshoeven (the Netherlands), Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren. There's a particularly good wikipedia article on the subject, which I would recommend that you have a look at, if you've got the time and inclination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_beer. 

I'm finishing up with a bonus photograph of the Battlefield of Waterloo. I took this shot from what would have been Napoleon's lines- looking directly towards La Haye Sainte Farm House (that's the small white blob in the middle). The mound on the left is the Waterloo Memorial. The place, although fascinating, was a terrifying tourist trap. The local restaurant sold Burger a la Ney, Omelet Wellington, and Steak Hougoumount. You have been warned...

 

Germany Calling!

 

 

Baden-Baden turned out to be a German version of Bath, or Cheltenham- an elegant, monied kinda town, where the Herrenvolk go on holiday to have sterilised mineral waters (and other similar delights) shot up their backsides. I liked the place. In such a refined environment, we were expecting lighter foods: carrot juices, infusions, Ryvita bread- that sort of thing. The reality was entirely different.

First stop was at a Lowenbrau biergarten. Here, burly waiters in Lederhosen brought vast plates of sauerkraut, sausages, pasta (schupfnudein), pork knuckle, bread dumplings (knodel) and the like. Judging by the Gothic proportions of most of our fellow diners' stomachs (their toes must be a distant memory), helpings of this enormity are probably de rigeur in the Fatherland.

I ordered a beer. This arrived in a flagon about three feet high (I kid thee not) and I could barely lift the blasted thing off the table. For breakfast we had hearty heaps of bratwurst, smoked salmon, goat's cheese, black pudding, smoked meats and black bread. It's not that the food is particularly bad in Germany; it's not. It's just that after a few days of knodel, Black Forest Gateau, stomach slapping and beer burping, you start to dream longingly of the lighter and more refined food cooked by the French.

 

 

Heidelberg had a grungier atmosphere to Baden-Baden and is bathed in a rather beautiful, glowing, reddish light. A distinguished university town, it was one one of the few German cities to have survived intact after the Second World War. It's also home to the slightly sinister duelling fraternities, for which I have a burgeoning fascination. The students still wear the uniform of cap, breeches, and coloured sash. The town is overlooked by the ruins of Heidelberg Castle. In the cellars is the enormous 18th century tun- or vast barrel (Das Grosse Fass) constructed by the Prince Elector Karl Theodor to hold fifty-eight thousand gallons of wine. The tun was looked after by one lucky Tyrolean midget called Perkeo.

There are some elegant food shops in Heidelberg selling biscuits, gingerbread, cake, sweets and other goodies. Bread is good in Deutschland. Particularly delicious were the Apfelchips- presumably apples sliced very thinly, dried and then deep-fried, with a sprinkling of sugar. On The Greasy Spoon tomorrow: the paradox of Belgium. Is Belgian food better than French food? We take our lives in our hands by driving to Waterloo...

 

Alsace Lorraine, Part Two

Next stop was the spooky Chateau de Jaulny in Lorraine. This unfashionable part of North Eastern France is remote, and off the tourist track- which being an admitted "contrarian" was one of the reasons for going there in the first place. The countryside is beautiful, if slightly desolate, and relatively unpopulated; with the lovely, fast, empty French roads surrounded by deep, dark forests, and undulating hills. Perfect werewolf country.

Jaulny stands silhouetted on a ridge and has a whiff of Transylvania about it. The chateau may have once been the residence of Joan of Arc.

Madame was charming, and explained that the stuffed wolf's head mounted on the stone wall in the Hall (which would have done Hammer proud) had been shot by one her ancestors at beginning of the last century. Wolves, apparently have now been re-introduced into France, and are now making their way back to Lorraine. After two unsettling nights (is Jaulny haunted?), we crossed the Vosges mountains into Alsace.

Alsace is a fascinating part of France. Until the end of the First World War it was part of Germany, though today it is a curious hybrid- the look is decidedly German, though the feel of the place is French. As soon as you leave Lorraine, things start getting Germanic: chalets appear; churches start aquiring onion domes, you start to get towns ending in "burg", and "heim"; supermarkets sell canned goat cheese terrine, the hills are alive with the sound of. And this applies to the food, too. If you're going to enjoy Alsatian food, the charming town of Colmar is probably a good place to do it.

Colmar is a Medieval huddle of half-timbered and shuttered houses, cobbled streets, winstraubs and tasty, buxom waitresses in the traditional dirnl. Lots of gingerbread, too.

One of the most delicious Alsatian specialities is the tarte aux flambee. This is similar to pizza, but has a thinner, more delicate crust. The traditional tarte has onion and smoked pork; though in a smallish restaurant opposite the kofihaus, The Girl had a superb asperges blanc tarte, washed down with a carafe of the excellent Alsatian wine.

Another Alsatian dish is sauerkraut, or charcoute. Pickled cabbage is stewed gently for three hours, often with a splash of Reisling at the end of the cooking period, and then served with sausages, bacon, and smoked pork.

Before we left Colmar for The Fatherland itself, I had another chance to sample the delights of the tete de veau. Well, I had to, didn't I? This one was well-prepared, with the chunks of pink coloured simmered meat (and the accompanying gobbets of brains and fat) arranged in an earthenware pot. With the viniagrette came a mayonnaise and caper sauce.

Alsace Lorraine, Part One

Camp Followers of The Greasy Spoon will have noticed that Yours Truly has been away for the last few weeks. I'm not especially apologetic, as The Girl and I have just spent the first half of August on a driving holiday around North Eastern France (destination Alsace Lorraine), Belgium, Luxembourg and the western reaches of Baden-Wurttemberg, which of course, as you all know, is in sunny Deutschland.

One of the raison d'etres of the holiday was the food. I was curious about the cuisine of Alsace- which has a fantastic reputation, and is partly Germanic, partly French (Alsace and large parts of Lorraine were annexed by the newly created German Empire after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870). It didn't fail to disappoint. But more of that later.

First stop was at a chateau close to the Somme battlefield, near Arras. Lovely house, but an immensely sad place, being as it was only a few kilometres from the former Front Line. After all these years, the ghosts of those desperate battles of the summer of 1916 still linger on. The breakfast table was graced by a glass bottle of pure, filtered apple juice, made by the local villagers. Apples, and that means cider too, are a feature of this area, which slightly surprised me, thinking as I did that this sort of stuff was more commonly found in Normandy.

We had a fantastic dinner at a low-key restaurant, La Cote d'Agneau, in the small town of Doullens. Service was pretty dopey, but By Gum, the food was good: lovely, intense flavours- a fabulous foie gras terrine, and rich, roasted tomatoes left to stew on the vine.

I noticed that the French tend to flavour their food far more than we do in England; they're generous with their salt and pepper; and I suppose that this is one of the reasons why they tend not to have salt and pepper pots on the table. This is a tip we can easily copy in our own kitchens.

Despite current opinion, I still reckon that French food is generally far superior to British food. Here in London, we've got lots of excellent (and expensive) restuarants patronised by the reasonably affluent, and well-off; but if you drive out to the English countryside, it can be a very different story. In France, the general attitude is different. You can eat in some dusty restaurant in a deserted ghost-town of a village, and the food, although not necessarily superb, will still, generally, be pretty darn good. Shops sell local produce of a superior quality (often organic), and the standard offered by supermarket shines in comparison to the unimaginative, chemical blandness of British supermarkets.

After a night of sin at the ultra haut bourgeois Chateau d'Etoges (serried ranks of shiny cars, pushy wine-waiters, a superb dinner, and a much needed bottle of the excellent local Borel-Lucas champagne) we sped on to Epernay, where we shacked up at the Pierson Whittaker Champagne House.

The Champagne industry is centred on the two towns of Rheims and Epernay. We toured the celllars of the House of Tattinger, founded relatively recently in 1932. They were extraordinary. The offices of Tattinger are on the outskirts of Rheims and above ground are both modernist, and extremely slick. But directly underneath this temple of corporate efficiency is a labyrinth of ancient monastic cellars, stocked with thousands of bottles of maturing champagne. Incidentally, in case you're wondering, Champagne is generally cheaper in the local supermarkets of the Rheims area- and there are definitely some bargains to be had out there. However, in the rest of France, the price of champagne is almost up to UK levels- and that means it's currently pretty expensive.

Tomorrow, in the next exciting installment of The Greasy Spoon: werewolf country, the delights of Colmar, and the gothic horror of German "cuisine"...