I know it won’t come as a surprise, but this weekend I went to a  restaurant 🙂

I must say that this time I picked out something special., I went to restaurant “Carrod’s”. What actually initially attracted me to this restaurant, is that the owner Stephanie runs and works alone in this restaurant. So I really wanted to see how she managed to do this? On top of that Stephanie is running to become ‘BRU lady chef of the year 2012’, she is also part of ‘Jong Keukengeweld’ and lots of magazines are writing about her… So my curiosity got stimulated even more.

The only thing that might scare off some people about this restaurant is that it is located in Borgerhout, the multicultural part of Antwerp with not the best reputation (I don’t mind as I lived here in my childhood).

One advice, if you want to come here, you’d better book a table in advance. When booking your table you have to let know for which formula you’re going for, you can choose between day menu of a suggestion menu. The day menu would be a soup, main course and a dessert at 15EUR. The suggestion menu would be a 4 course dinner at 30EUR. Currently there is also the ‘Jong Keukengeweld’ menu, but this only  until the end of ‘Jong Keukengeweld’.  Both menu’s change daily, which is very remarkable  (The Jong keukengeweld menu  was the same over the whole period).  Knowing Stephanie didn’t study at cooking school, she has a modern art background… she only started cooking after having worked for a while at the Hilton hotel… after that she decided to get her chef’s degree and she has the restaurant for about 1 year now.  We went for the ‘Day menu’ as we didn’t have that much time to eat.

Once she opens the restaurant door for you, you immediately  feel at home. First off all because the 3 tables are in the former living room of the house, but also because of the friendliness and spontaneity of Stephanie,who also immediately wants to know what you want to drink. We went for a glass of Spumante. The soup  was fennel soup with watercress and pink peppercorns (I’m really not a soup eater, but this was some good soup!). The main course was a spaghetti carbonara like pasta, but with brussels sprouts, turnip (knolraap), sweet potatoe, trout and I think I tasted some goats cheese. With our main course we drank a 2007 Refosco from Villarosso.  To finish our meal we had a Dame Blanche. Overall a very nice meal and I honestly felt like being at a friend’s house for dinner, the same cosiness and great talk as I would have at a friend’s house (with nice food) . During my dinner I also saw some dishes from the Suggestion menu pass by and I must say they really looked very nice and I’m returning for sure to try the suggestion menu.

So basically if you like the ‘at home feeling’ and none of that fancy panths thing, this place is definitely the place for you!

Restaurant Carrod’s:

Website: http://www.carrods.be

Address:

                Krugerplein 18

                2140 Borgerhout, Belgium

Phone n°: +32 (0)498 06 23 21