L'Idiot du Village

A really quirky little restaurant- I was celebrating my birthday with husband & daughters, & we all thought it was very special. Great food & v,friendly service in an interesting part of Brussels. Loved the décor too.

I have been in quite a few restaurants in my life – I have reviewed more than 300 restaurants in the last 3 years – and among them there were several gourmet restaurants. I am outraged by the shocking food and service I got in this one. I started asking for a flute of champagne for aperitif and they served me a glass of bubbles that did not quite tasted like one (I am trained as a professional sommelier and am certainly capable of recognizing champagne). I asked which champagne it was and I was told it was a glass of Cremant de Bourgogne… we start with the wrong foot here: this is not only inadmissible but close to fraud. We then had frogs' legs which were just acceptable and a fois gras which was barely OK. They then served our order of sea bass and scallops and my scallops come plunged into a sea of butter sauce. Now, I am intolerant to lactose and when ordering scallops I would not imagine they would cook them with butter, which is something I have never seen in my whole life. When I told the waiter – a guy who probably lives down wisteria lane – that I could not eat that, he told me that I should have known and that they cook all their dishes with butter as If this were the most natural thing on earth and I were the stupid here. He didn't even offer to change the dish or to help with something else and even passing by tried to make fun of me. When I complained with another waiter, the reply I received was “This is not my business” forget this place: food is very, very short of being good and the service is probably the worst I have ever had. The mix of arrogance and incompetence is the worst thing you can face. Truth be told, the interiors are not bad, though a bit overcharged for me.