6 Best Restaurants in Brussels, Belgium

A couple of miles west of Gaasbeek is the rather bijou little town of Lennik, home to a fair number of high-priced dining options. One of the finer is August, a wineshop-cum-restaurant that oozes class and is set in an 18th-century wine merchant's premises. Paired set menus aren't cheap, but they pack a lot of flavor in, arriving immaculately presented.

A short walk from place Jourdan reveals this elegant, modern French restaurant, its pared-down, neat decor broken up with colorful prints of animals and the bustle of the open kitchen. The choice of food is equally sparse but to the point: its four-course set menus deliver with imagination and no little amount of skill, letting you mix and match from your pick of cold, warm, hot, and sweet dishes on the blackboard. Lunch is a great deal at €28 for a starter and main.

Finally, the mushroom-themed restaurant of your dreams—well, someone's dreams. And while diners might discover that it isn't quite as eccentric as they'd expect (mushrooms feature in all dishes but often as side ingredients), it is nonetheless quite out there, particularly the desserts: try the cheesecake with cèpes and blueberries! The owners also run the impressive fine-dining French restaurant La Buvette and the excellent bakery Hopla Geiss, whose cinnamon rolls are utterly delicious, on the same street.

A self-declared "vegetable rotisserie," the imaginative prix-fixe menu dangles a mostly pescatarian collection of disparate ingredients, spanning fruit, veg, and fish that somehow come together on the plate to create tiny edible jewels. Yes, they might spit-roast the odd cauliflower, but the ethos here is as much about market-garden ingredients awash in lacy foams and flavorsome sauces. The stylish red-brick interior, hidden away on an otherwise nondescript street, makes it feel all the more like you discovered a secret in St-Gilles.

While COVID-19 forced a lot of Brussels restaurants to embrace reservation policies, 203 has gone for the first-come, first-served approach, and recommends turning up at 7 (we'd argue 10 minutes beforehand) to guarantee a spot at dinner. It's certainly worth the effort. Set menus at this charming bistro change every week, according to the whims of the season, and there's a fine selection of natural wines, which are, by now, almost mandatory in all modern Brussels restaurants.

Salads packed with flavor, great hunks of quiches, and homemade lemonades are what keeps locals healthy at this popular lunch spot.