Belgo

I knew I should have written this article just after we visited, but didn't have time before our New York trip (more on that in the next post). I'm post-dating this article to the day we went, but writing it almost two weeks later. As such, the details are kind of fuzzy. Maybe that's partly to do with the amount of beer we consumed that evening. I remember the food, though. It was fantastic.

I'm not a huge fan of seafood in general, and bivalves don't usually appeal to me. Becca's the same way, at least about the shelled slimies, so even though one of our friends heartily recommended this place, we'd been finding reasons to put it off. When he was in town, though, we could no longer weasel out of going. I'm really glad we did. We went to the Belgo on Kingsway near Covent Garden/Holborn. They do steamed mussels in 1-Kg pots in a variety of flavors, with the mussels still in shell. The wife won the jackpot with the Thai pot. It was a well-balanced green curry that really brightened up the meat. I tried the Navigateur, which was a mild garam malasa curry sauce on the mussels. Our friend went with the Snob, a lobster, champagne, and cream bisque, again with mussels. I was fairly disappointed with mine; the mussels were good but the sauce was merely passable. We all sampled each other's, and I think the consensus was that the Snob and the Thai were both excellent. My opinion is that the Thai was the absolute knockout at the table.

I'll say I was looking forward to the beers at Belgo. I've been told that Belgium is a boring place to visit, nobody would ever want to go there, why don't you go somewhere more interesting, what is wrong with you, you stupid American? But I have a deep and abiding love for Belgian ales, and at some point I need to do a monastery tour. This place is the next best thing. I think between the 3 of us, we must have sampled at least 10 different brews and a handle of schnapps shots that the manager brought out for us. Becca tried the Lindemans Pecheressse for the first time, and I daresay she's fallen in love with lambics. This is good, because she normally doesn't like beer, and I was worried I might have to make my monastery tour sans companion. Now I know I'll be able to keep her interested, or at least mildly sedated, while I geek out on Tripels and Quads. The ones I remember ordering were the Rochefort 8 and the Orval. Our friend started off with a Westmalle Tripel. Midway through the meal, the manager noticed we were going after a variety of brews and started making recommendations that weren't on the menu. There was a black cherry lambic, some mixture of peach lambic and beer that he said was traditional, and a couple others that I don't remember. We finished the night with a flight of schnapps that he gifted us with for being such good sports. I'll end this review with a big thank-you for the excellent service we received that night. I've found during our time in London that good service is the norm, but excellent service is very hard to come by. Belgo delivered on all fronts.