A tale of two lunchtimes - part I (Belgo Centraal / Noord / Zuid in general)

Member Name: Andwynn

Product:	Belgo Centraal / Noord / Zuid in general
Date:	26/11/00 (352 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great service, good menu, reasonable price

Disadvantages: difficult to find

For a lunchtime celebration at work, we popped along to Belgos in
Covent Garden. It was my first time, and I had no idea at all
what to expect. I'm not the easiest of people to feed, as I'm
vegetarian, and Belgos do specialise in seafood - muscles mainly,
some prawns and lobster also on the menu, I believe.

After a 15 minute trek to find it, down windy streets packed with
tourists, we were really quite hungry by the time we got there.

On arrival, we were ushered into the basement by a man in ... a
monks habit. Hmm, ok. We sat at wooden benches, almost church
pew like. All the waiters were wearing habits (all male, as I
guess this is an unenlightened monastery we're eating in) and
had the standard central-london 'unspecified foreign accent'.

The lunchtime special was five pound for any of 4 dishes - I had
mushrooms in cream-beer sauce on rye bread. From memory, I
believe the other option were sausages, muscles, and one other I
can't recall. I also had the Belgian mash with my meal. And it
included a beer. On a personal note, I wasn't fond of the
mushrooms, but the bread (which you also get a basket of with
butter and garlic-mayo) and the mash were delicious. If you've
never had Belgian mash before, it's kind of like bubble and
squeak before it's fried, ie, mashed potato with lots of veggie
'bits' in it.

The dessert menu looked lovely, but unfortunately we didn't have
time to stay for one. The range of beers is impressive, from
sweet cherry beer to chocolate beer, and blond brug (I found this
one undrinkably unpleasant, but it seems to be the favourite with
my collegues) to darker 'sudden death' (!)

Service was excellent, atmosphere was spot on, prices were very
competitive for the area.

Summary: