When I look for a restaurant I mostly look ‘far’ away, without actually realizing that on less than a 5 minute walk there is an eatery that can still my hunger as good as the restaurants far away 🙂 Although I must confess that I got to know it aka FAIM via the local Antwerp tv channel ATV, who showed it on one of their show’s called ‘hotspot’. If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have known it as it is in a part of my town I never pass (until now). FAIM already exists for a while, but it was only in February this year they decided to open up for lunch. Before February their main focus was catering and private dining… This month they are also opened at night, because most of the catering and private dining events are at night time 🙂

The friend that joined me for lunch is actually an old colleague of mine who has the same weak spot as me, good food 🙂 🙂 I remember when we used to work together, the moment I walked in the office we would start talking about food and great restaurants (making other colleagues crazy)… we would talk that much (in our breaks, never during work itself 😉 )we became so hungry that 85% of the time it would result into a lunch somewhere in the area. As we are now not working together anymore, this time we just did it for old time sake 🙂 and FAIM seemed like to ideal place.

FAIM does not have an enormous ‘à la carte’ menu, but they do have something for everybody…next to that they also have a lunch menu and a ‘carte blanche’ menu that changes according what was available on the markets in the morning.. As you might guess,  our interest went mostly to the ‘carte blanche menu’:-). This week’s special ingredient (when we were at Faim that is) were mussels  and therefore also part of the ‘carte blanche’ and lunch menu… when the host overheard my friend saying he didn’t like mussels  too much,  he immediately interacted suggesting they could adapt the ‘carte blanche” menu without any  problem at all and leaving mussels out of the menu … and so they did.

After finishing our refreshing aperitif (for me a glass of bubbles and my friend a glass of vermouth) and the appetizer celery soup, we were served Green asparagus with smoked salmon, scallops, little grey shrimps and a mousseline . ALL ingredients I adore in 1 plate, a win wine I’d say and a not to heavy way to start the meal.  If it was cloudy I wanted red and when sunny white wine, it was sunny making we went for a white wine… the host suggested the Grüner Veltliner by Weingut Rabl. Summarized, SUMMER

The mean dish that followed was a classic entrecote (which they get from a local master butcher) with a little bit of choron sauce (bearnaise with tomato). This dish can either be heavenly or hell, luckily in this case it was more leaning on the good side than the bad side 🙂

We finished off with a red berries, gin ice and a homemade sabayon (the sabayon was nearly as good as my dad’s sabayon)… I would have loved staying some more, but duty called…

Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the great company or maybe the food, but I had one great lunch that asks to be done all over again and I’m pretty sure who my ‘victim’ will be :-). FAIM is the perfect lunchspot for a good non-nonsense lunch

Restaurant FAIM

Website: http://www.faim-traiteur.be/

Address: Kerkplein 8, 2650 Edegem, Belgium