Jonathan B.
Google
I can describe Bijgaarden in 3 letters: "Meh". You can probably imagine the flat tone behind my lacklustre wording, and the famous red guide doesn't agree with me. Let me quote them:
"This highly popular brasserie with a chic and discreet decor is a real institution. There is a wide variety of specialities on the à la carte menu at reasonable prices (attractive specials). Large terrace surrounded by greenery."
To which I would answer that you can hide a merry dish full of issues behind those few lines.
That the place is "highly popular" or a "real institution" with locals, I have no doubt.
Our party of 12 turned up on a quiet Tuesday, so we shared the place with two other tables and our waiter. Unfortunately, dinner quickly turned into a duel between him and us. And I grew up in France, so I was schooled on the topic of rough waitressing from a very early age. This ain't my first argybargy with a napkin on my arm.
Back to Le Guide:
'Chic and discreet decor'? Erm, no. Please don't confuse dark walls, framed illegible B-celebrity squiggles on napkins, and a profusion of brass fittings for style or cosiness. This isn't 1994.
Last year, my friend's car was broken into and his laptop stolen from just outside this reastaurant whilst we had dinner. The location really is not that great. It has mature trees and cobbles, but so had Victorian Birmingham, and nobody longs from dinner with the Peaky Blinders.
I'm beginning to suspect they reviewed this place on the back of a visit to the website.
The ordering was a mess, it took several attempts to get drinks. Apparently, we were neither quick nor organised enough for our waiter's exacting standards. The food order was another poorly orchestrated morass of confusion, you can order anything you like from the set menu, but if you want the 'à la carte' (which included all the same dishes) you can only order 5 dishes because the kitchen can't cope. Frankly, at this point, neither could I.
In the end, the waiter relented and begrudglingly poked into his tablet whatever we had negotiated.
Why open a restaurant, write a menu with 50 dishes, and then limit the choices?
Le Guide are strangely silent on this paradox.
The food, when it turned up, was barely adequate, some dishes were well presented. I can recommend the beef carpaccio starter but not much else. Avoid the caramelised porc which isn't caramelised, just tough and overseasoned, even beyond the misnomer the dish has no merit whatsoever. Its presentation was sloppy and wouldn’t pass muster with a first year student at a catering college.
There was limp pasta swimming in truffle sauce, huge portions of anemic boulettes, and the list goes on. Our orders came out wrong with some dishes we hadn't ordered, and I had long finished my carbonade (served bizarely warm but in a hot plate) before my chips turned up. We waited with empty glasses whilst our white wine sat in an ice bucket on another table. Maybe we couldn't be trusted to help ourselves or perhaps the waiter feared we might do a better job without him. We shall never care to know. And the litany of imperfections could extend some way beyond this point, but I shall spare you the pathos.
The trumpeted "attractive specials" were too well hidden for me to find.
My final gripe with the red Guide is with their definition of 'reasonable prices'. €49 for a three course set meal in a bistro serving poorly executed average food is pushing the price point to its comical outter limit. Though in the end, I was in no mood for laughter.
I did not complain since I did not want to embarass my guests, but Bijgaarden you need to take a long hard look at your work. You have been trading on past glories for too long. You should stop believing your own hype (especially that red book nonsense) and have a go at properly running a restaurant.
Also, every time you let people with dogs into a restaurant I will dock you another star. People eat in restaurants, not their yappy shiatsus. Next time, maybe I should turn up with my pet crocodile, or better still, just bring my own waiter.
