Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

[This piece was originally written for Ferment magazine,but I'm not sure if they're using it anymore...so here it is!]

“Oh, I love Brussels!” I squealed enthusiastically at a colleague a few years ago, when she told me she had to head over there for some reason or another. I suppose I was excited to finally have somebody to talk about beer with at work.

“Really?” She said, curling a lip. “It’s so grey and ugly.”

Taken aback, I had nothing to add, and we took our coffee mugs and went back to our desks. Grey? Ugly? Had we been to the same city?

Maybe she had a point. As Eoghan Walsh points out time after time in his excellent book Brussels Beer City, the local council has an obsessive desire to wipe out any and all historic personality from the place. And perhaps, yes, the pavements on the high streets are wonky with paving stones that flip up and splash you with filthy rainwater as you pass… hang on, I’m meant to be talking about why I love and miss the place. Let me start again.

My first trip to Brussels, like most people’s, was an education in beer. It was the first place I’d ever heard of native yeasts, not that I understood or cared about them at the time. It was also the first place I ever drank a sour beer, a Leifman’s kriek brut in the Delirium Café. There is a photo of me holding the goblet and looking out of the window at the street, from a lifetime so distant I barely recognise the person in it. But I remember what that beer tasted like.

Since then I can’t remember how many times I’ve been back. My impressions of it have been flicked through hundreds of times over lockdown like a well-worn scrapbook of brown cafés. Last time I went it was Christmastime, and a 100ft tree in the Grand-Place towers over every memory of it, a weird beacon of good times decorated in oddly prophetic Ambulance-blue lights.

This was a special trip, because I was with friends I don’t normally get to see. We got drunk and played cards in Moeder Lambic, and visited Brasserie Cantillon where I videoed them trying lambic for the first time. We sat outside a tourist trap restaurant for mussels, wrapped in blankets in the freezing cold as the Christmas market twinkled on Place Sainte-Catherine. On top of it all though, the best thing: we visited Nüetnigenough.

Beef or lamb stewed for hours in beer-rich sauces, falling from the bone into creamy mashed potato. Lambic on tap, geuze in the gravy, bottles of beer chosen from tiny script on the menu and taken down from the attic especially. A tiny dining room on an unassuming street where anyone, including myself, is happy to wait an hour or more for a table. And anyway, you’re in a beautiful art deco Brussels bar with a glass of Saison Dupont, the snow falling (okay, it was light drizzle) outside on the street. Why would you mind standing at the bar?

Other Stuff

• Are you still listening to Ritchie Sacramento non-stop? Me too. Here's Mogwai live for KEXP in 2017 to brighten up your Thursday aft. (Their amazing drummer in the video is Cat Myers, standing in for Martin while he was ill)

• Ottolenghi has a new series of "Test Kitchen" books coming out and forgive me for gushing - they are beautiful and I love how this press release talks about his whole team creating and compiling their content. Is this what being grateful for the bare minimum feels like? Well anyway, I want them all. So it worked.

• I really enjoyed this article by Tasting Beer author Randy Mosher about the flavour of stout. How much of a drink's flavour comes down to what we expect from it? And how much of our tasting vocab is only there performatively because it's what we think we're supposed to say? It's something we talk about a lot at home when we're laughing at Untappd reviews. Sorry.

• Sesame Street colouring book pages inspired by works of art. Cookie Monster in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks is my favourite.

• J'Adore Le Plonk by Rachel Hendry is touching and important, always, but this week's especially hit an emosh nerve for me because I've been thinking about subjectivity in taste so much lately; about our perosnal experiences and how much is dragged out of us by the sensations of taste and smell. THis sentence form it says it all: "I don’t know what your wine tastes like but I’d like to."

• I always like reading about natural and biodynamic winery backstories, even if they are kindof all the same most of the time. This one, about Athénaïs de Béru and her biodynamic burgundies is on the Birkenstock website, for some reason.

• Chilled 2,400 year old Roman mosaic skeleton says "Enjoy your life! Be cheerful!"

• Sometimes I read the New Yorker cover to cover, and sometimes I just need a headline to feel like I read the whole article. This piece on the joy of voice note conversations I have to admit I didn't read past the first para, but I didn't need to. I felt validated and I agreed with the sentiment. Right now sometimes that's all I need.

• The Great Grape Alphabet over on Les Caves de Pyrene is pretty great - they're on B at the moment.

• Food writer MiMi Aye has been spreading important, shocking reports and information from Myanmar directly from people living through the coup. I'm grateful for her work and for her linktree, which shows many, many ways we can help.

My Stuff

• Somewhat ludicrously, I've been asked by William Rubel, author of Bread: A Global History, to lead a seminar/talk/lecture on British bread roll taxonomy. Still working out the details. But it'll be good!

• Waitrose mag have asked me to contribute to a piece on pub beer gardens, which obviously I am THRILLED about. Should be out next issue?

• I've just about finished edits on a piece for GBH on Corto, so expect that in the coming weeks

• I'm working on a piece for Burum Collective which will be published next month

• On the 30th March I'm a guest on CAMRA's Pub's, Pints and People podcast with Cath Potter

• I'm open for commissions so if you're looking for an original voice in beer, cider, wine or food, get in touch! [email protected]

• If you enjoy this newsletter and fancy buying me a carton of Ribena, thanks! You can do this by visiting my Ko-fi page.

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - Tom Brannon