Eating dinner along the waterside is the ideal setting for at the end of a sunny day. Wouldn’t you agree? Last weekend we went out for dinner with some friends in that exact setting. I’ll admit that when going to a brasserie I’m always in doubt of the quality I’ll be getting on my plate, but Brasserie Montreal definitely served us some good quality! Brasserie Montreal is located at a fishpond right outside of the city center of Mechelen and I did enjoy our setting for the night overlooking the fairly big pond.

Having a view is nice, but more important is what you get on your plate… They had outdone themselves and I didn’t expect to see such refined dishes. As an appetizer we got a soused herring with cucumber and black olive which already helped to get more appetite (if that is possible as my appetite is always pretty big). From this point on it only went crescendo.

The starters for the night were for me pickled herring with jonagold apple, beetroot and dill. My table guests took Buffalo mozzarella with tomato varieties, a goat cheese salad with bbq pineapple and Granny Smith and some King crab with courgette, tomato and kaffir. A true treat for the eyes.

This got followed with for me a classical Belgian Blue Chateau Briand (I was craving for some red meat) with béarnaise and freshly fries. The ladies at the table took a Gilt-head bream and BBQ salmon “label rouge” with some green asparagus, kohlrabi and beech mushroom.

We combined this with a 2007 Spanish red Herencia del Padri from Priorat made by Bernard Magrez. The herbal like taste and stronger body of the wine went really well with the Chateau Briand (my modest opinion)

The best is yet to come as the dessert can either ruin the whole meal or make it an even better success… in our case luckily the second one 🙂

Not that we didn’t see any good dessert on the menu, but as we saw the chef (Toon) could be very creative with the previous plates we decided to let him free-wheel for dessert and be creative (with what he has in his fridge of course). This resulted in two njammy desserts: the first dessert was a fresh red fruit dessert with a white chocolate cream, flower bouillon (yes flower, this is not a typo). FYI all the herbs and flowers used in the dishes are all grown in their own garden!! The second dessert was chocolate inspired with mascarpone.

I really like being surprised and to find out my prejudgment was totally wrong!! Once again it got proven to never judge a book by its cover.  I really enjoyed my dinner at Brasserie Montreal and as cherry on the cake I had some great table guests! I’ll definitely be back 🙂

Brasserie Montreal

Website: http://www.brasseriemontreal.be/

Address: Duivenstraat 56, 2800 Mechelen

Phone n°: +32 (0) 15 20 40 77