IN THE MELTING POT

I’m normally a shocking slattern on a weekend, but last Sunday I dragged a comb through my luscious auburn tresses, threw on an old Armani peignoir, and schlepped out to St Gilles for brunch at Britxos, the recently opened outlet of catering supremos La Britannique, with the editor, who presumably wanted to offer me a pay rise.

I wouldn’t say it’s in a prime location - a bit off the beaten track to tell the truth.  However, it did afford me the opportunity to see that bit of St Gilles just past Ixelles, which is an up and coming area with a lot to offer - Art Deco houses, including the Horta museum, walking distance from the trendy Rue du Bailli, and a mere 15 minutes by tram from Mérode.  So you could kick off an afternoon’s cultural learnings with a visit to the market followed by a copious brunch at Britxos, which styles itself as a café-deli, serving breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, cocktails and snacks to eat in or take out.  The menu changes weekly, so it’s worth checking out their website to see if the weekend brunch is going to be Asian, English, Irish, Mexican, or something else.  The nice people at Britxos are open to suggestions, if you’d like to surprise a visiting Albanian delegation (for example) with a taste of the old country.

The cocktail list is on the blackboard above the bar and I sipped a Bloody Mary whilst perusing the top shelf of drinks which boasted some impressive beverages - top hole gins The Botanist and Hendrick’s (voted best gin in the world), and no less a rum than Nicaragua’s finest Flor de Cana.   I made a mental note to come back at cocktail hour, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and try a Glasgow Slag (Irn-Bru and peach liqueur if you must know).

Photo:  Alison Cornford-Matheson

The brunch concept is based on Spanish style tapas, or pintxos as they are called in the Basque country.  British pintxos = Britxos.  Geddit?  Oh suit yourself.  We had the Mexican brunch, which comprises four courses and a bottle of wine for 27 euros.  The entree was a Guadalajara chicken quesadilla, rather like a flattened chorizo, guacamole, potato, onion and cheese pie, drizzled with the chef’s own recipe sweet chutney;  this was followed by Huevos rancheros - two fried eggs with a cold Mexican spicy ratatouille, and tasty jalapeno cornbread.  Then came beer-battered white fish with Mexican sweetcorn salad,  and to finish, vanilla ice cream with Mexican  ganache and a raspberry macaroon.  All washed down with a very pleasant Spanish cabernet sauvignon.  

Photo: Alison Cornford-Matheson

The place only seats 14, plus four seats at the bar - brunch is served in two sittings at 11.30 and 1.30 on weekends, so it’s advisable to phone ahead and book.  If you like improbable multicultural combinations, this is the place for you - a Mexican brunch cooked by a Latvian in a Basque inspired British tapas bar with Spanish wine - Brussels in a nutshell.  The craic was uniquely Brusseleir however - relaxed and friendly, and if you’re on your own, it’s quite likely you’ll end up chatting to your neighbours, as I did to a shy young gentleman from South London who was lunching at the bar.  I was born in Knightbridge moiself, but I will share with you now a little known fact, I was brung up in Sarf London, and it only takes the dulcet tones of the Old Kent Road and a couple of Bloody Marys and my carefully contrived veneer flakes away quicker than Kat Moon’s nail varnish.   By the time we’d finished the four course brunch and were on our second bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, I was singing “Maybe it’s becorze I’m a Londoner” and the place was starting to resemble the Queen Vic on a Sunday lunchtime.  

Your writer doing a Christine Keeler with a couple of British pouffes I found in Britxos
Photo:  Tony Mallett

Needless to say, no pay rise was mentioned.

On second thoughts, perhaps you ought to get your cultural learnings out of the way first before brunching at Britxos.  If you're more interested in the Glasgow Slag than the huevos rancheros, you might prefer to go on a Monday evening when they have live jazz.

Britxos
13 rue de Savoie
1060 St Gilles
Tel:  02 613 48 90
www.facebook.com/britxos
http://www.labritannique.com/contact-britxos

A HILL OF BEANS

The week of the terrible heatwave I was holidaying in the deep south west of France.  It was hot. Fearsome hot.  Around 40 degrees and probably more. The sun would reach full blast just about lunchtime, and so eating out became more of an ordeal than a pleasure.   It was all I could do to lift a lettuce leaf to my parched lips, and made frequent visits to the supermarket just to hang around the chilled food section.  Ideal conditions, you would think, to lose a bit of weight.  But despite profuse "glowing", not an ounce of lard melted from my body. 

My technical adviser and I flew down to Toulouse and spent a night there before following the canal south.  The place to go in Toulouse is the Place du Capitole, where the magnificent Capitole palace, seat of the regional Prefecture, dominates a vast square bordered with arcades, where cafés and restaurants abound, many of them quite fancy.  Instead of patio heaters they had vaporisers, which pumped out a fine water vapour every minute or so to cool down the punters.  It was so hot I didn't even care about my hair frizzing, and hoped to be mistaken for a retired Black Panther with a melanin deficiency.  Pizza Marzano, for those of you who don't know, is the continental name of Pizza Express.  And Pizza Express, for those of you who don't know, make the best pizzas in the UK.  Our waiter was a most agreeable young man who turned out to be English, not that you'd know when he spoke faultless French.  I knew this part of France was overrun by Brits, but was not expecting to be served food by one.  Oliver (for it was he) had mastered that very French trick of being efficient and still finding time to chat.   Our pizzas were delicious, especially washed down with two bottles of rosé (well it was a hot night).  Probably not the cheapest pizza in France, but a very pleasant evening nonetheless. 

The cassoulet is the typical dish of the southwest.  Like every other dish in France, ownership of the "genuine" cassoulet is jealously fought over by neighbouring towns.   Toulouse, Carcassonne and Castelnaudary dispute the recipe, but Castelnaudary has won the right to call itself  "world capital of cassoulet".  The dish informs the whole social calendar, and Castelnaudary's annual cassoulet festival was being held that same week, including such events as bean-throwing, and probably a cassoulet-eating contest, organised by the Confrérie du Cassoulet, who dress up in robes and silly hats for their official dinners, and have long confabulations about what constitutes a genuine Castelnaudary "lingot", or haricot bean, which is the only type allowed to be used in a Castelnaudary cassoulet.  There is even a syndicate of bean growers, comprising about 40 local growers, to defend the provenance of the legume.  They certainly have their finger on the pulse. 

The Grand Master of the Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary

 
 
French provincial food festivals are nutty affairs, as readers of Peter Mayle will know, usually involving the Mayor, funny hats, a number of dogs on the loose going potty, and - always - a brass band.  In Castel they had a mini marathon, and at 9 p.m., with the temperature still at 30+ degrees, we watched the runners come gliding in, not a bead of sweat on them.  The townspeople cheered each runner, and gave especially big cheers for those who ran in groups, like the firemen or the policemen.  We sat at a nearby bar, next to a giant tattooed man who looked like an escaped murderer.  It turned out he had done 16 years in the French Foreign Legion, so my first guess might not have been far from the truth.  I couldn't understand a word he said.  He couldn't understand a word I said.  My technical advisor had to interpret.  The man had a beautiful Golden Labrador who smiled encouragingly at all the runners, and seemed to be on the lookout for Peter Mayle.  The scary man told us how he'd rescued him from abusive owners, and that the dog even slept with him.  Nice to see that even a hard case like that can be redeemed by the love of a good Labrador.

 The Mayor and a couple of other official looking types stood in a row and dished out the prizes, while a bloke with a microphone kept up a nonstop stream of overexcited patter.  The main events would be taking place at the weekend, after our departure, and I made a mental note to return the next year to see the parade of the Confrérie in their robes, throw some beans, and cop some free grub. 

However, there was one thing that remained to be done.  Someone had to try a cassoulet.   In Carcassonne, where it was nudging 40 degrees at lunchtime, we steered clear of the tempting shady terraces under the enormous fig trees trees between the inner and outer walls of the citadel, and headed for "La Divine Comédie" on boulevard Jean Jaurès, technically a pizzeria but we had inside information that the chef made the best cassoulet in town.  The genial Didier emerged sweating from his kitchen to greet us.  I just could not face a cassoulet, and ordered the salade méridionale, but my technical advisor made the ultimate sacrifice.

La Divine Comédie, Carcassonne

It looked easily enough for two people, with a duck leg perched on top of a big terracotta bowl of haricot beans, duck and a gigantic Toulouse sausage.  My salad on the other hand looked like a summer dress, with big slices of Cavaillon melon, mozzarella balls and slices of duck magret sitting atop a mound of fresh salad.    "Good luck old chap," I saluted him, as he looked slightly warily at the giant steaming dish of cowboy food.  But he set to it, taking his cue from Mo Farah - slowly at first, spooning a little onto his plate at a time, chugging steadily through it, and picking up speed at the end, to show a clean plate. As he crossed the line, he raised his spoon and fork in the air triumphantly and was awarded the gold medal for cassoulet eating in very hot weather.  

My salad had been an elegant sufficiency for me, but I still ordered an ice cream, just to cool me down, you understand.  

Of course on my return to Brussels, where the weather was less than half the temperature - 15 degrees and drizzling - the urge for a cassoulet overcame me, and I had to research where to find one.  There appear to be five recommended restaurants specializing in the cuisine of south-west France.  I cannot vouch for the provenance of the beans, but here goes:

 

Au Coin des Artistes

5 rue du Couloir

1050 Bruxelles

Near Flagey

Tel: 02.647.34.32

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g188644-d2315660-r126250546-Le_Coin_des_Artistes-Brussels.html

La Grenouille Bleue

97, rue des Alexiens
1000 Bruxelles

Tél : +32 (0)2 514 00 05

www.la-grenouille-bleue.be

Le Saint-Boniface

Rue Saint-Boniface 9

1050 Ixelles

Tel:  02 511 5366

www.saintboniface.be

Domaine de Lintillac

Rue de Flandre 25

1000 Brussels

Tel:  02 511 5123

Closed Mondays

http://sitebe.resto.com/d/domainedelintillac

Le Domaine de Chavagnac

Place du Beguinage 6

1000 Brussels

Tel: 02 223 3340

http://www.ledomainedechavagnac.fr/

And if you're ever in Toulouse or Carca:

Pizza Marzano
Place du Capitole
Toulouse

La Divine Comedie
Boulevard Jean Jaures
Carcassonne
Tel:  +33 (0)4 68 72 30 36
Closed Sunday

VALLEY GIRL

The Loire Valley is a mere three and a half hours from Brussels on the train (including a metro journey across Paris) or five hours by car.   You can visit it in grand style, staying in a chateau, or on the cheap, as I did.  I chose my hostelries mostly from the Logis de France guide, small hotels in the 65-85 euro bracket, with good restaurants attached.   In the run-up to Easter, most of these hotels were underoccupied so you could just turn up, although these days my nerves wouldn’t be able to stand the uncertainty of finding myself without a bed.  I worked my way downstream from Orléans to Chinon, stopping off at Bourgueil, Vouvray, Saumur and Chinon. Just to see the chateaux, you understand.  It was purely coincidental that all these towns make stonking wine.

Le Pavillon Bleu, Olivet 

Orléans is an elegant town built mostly in white stone. It’s smaller than you would expect of a regional capital, and most sights worth seeing have a Joan of Arc connection.  It’s got quite a bourgeois feel to it, and it’s the sort of place where well brung up young men take their ancient mamas out for lunch.  I stayed at Le Pavillon Bleu, a delightful olde-worlde hotel-restaurant in Olivet, just south of Orléans, on the banks of the peaceful Loiret.  On weekends in summer it turns into a "Guinguette" - one of those olde worlde riverside open-air restaurants with accordion music and dancing, as seen in Auguste Renoir paintings.     I arrived mid afternoon to find the place shut up, and a sign saying that the hotel opened at 5 p.m., so  I went for a walk along the river path which was popular with the old dears from the old people's home along the road.  I could think of worse places to retire.  There are only four or five rooms, which overlook the courtyard and the river.  My room had a gorgeous walnut "lit bateau" or sleigh bed.

The €33 menu gourmand comprises no less than six courses - an "amuse-bouche" to get your gastric juices going, a starter and main course of your choice, then a "pré-dessert" before your chosen dessert, and finally "mignardises" which I think used to be known as "petits fours" in the better class of Harvester, with the coffee.  I fell into my sleigh bed a happy bunny and dreamed I was riding through the snows of Siberia wrapped in furs with Omar Sharif, the tinkling of the rain on the surface of the Loiret somehow transforming itself into the sound of sleigh bells.

 The next day I swung by Chambord and Cheverny to Blois, and then on to Amboise.  That’s four castles just in that last sentence.  Amboise on the left bank is a delightful town stuffed with history.  The castle is the last resting place of Leonardo da Vinci, which is reason enough to visit.  I paid my respects to the Maestro, whose presumed remains, as far as they could tell after they had been chucked unceremoniously into the communal pit by the revolutionary hordes in 1789, are interred in a special chapel under a marble slab engraved in French and Italian.   Nice touch.  About a mile down the road is Le Clos Lucé, the mansion where Leonardo lived for the last 3 years of his life as a guest of King Francis 1st.

Il Maestro

But can’t hang about, on to Tours where I stayed in the Hotel du Manoir, a small hotel with its own (small) car park, although it’s only 5 minutes walk from the main railway station where you can park a car underground for €10 a day.  This hotel didn’t have a restaurant, so I had dinner in Le Bistro du Chien Jaune, an old fashioned bistro next to the tourist office which does a pre-theatre menu for theatergoers to the Salle des Congrès across the road.  While I waited my turn, I tipped my head back and looked at the original artwork on the ceiling.  I had the €19.50 three course "menu gourmand" and treated myself to a half litre of Chinon for €12.50.  

Tours old town, place Plumereau

Tours is an eminently pleasant town which behaves as though it was the regional capital, although that honour falls to more sedate Orléans.  It has a university, a cathedral, a big Préfecture, a big opera house, an old quarter, a market, a big station, the TGV, and, more importantly as far as I was concerned, a Monoprix, a Galeries Lafayette and a Printemps.  The old quarter around Place Plumereau is delightful and stuffed with restaurants.   

My next stop was Saumur, which I reached via Bourgueil and St Nicolas.  You can tell you're in a wine growing region when the road into town is lined with wine shops.  The  Hotel Cristal in Saumur has rooms overlooking the Loire with a 180 degree view.  The rooms are clean and quiet, but I literally did have to open the bathroom door to turn around.   The hotel restaurant Au Quai de la Loire offers a €19 gastronomic menu which did not disappoint.  I washed it down with a half bottle of Réserve des Vignerons white Saumur for €11 extra.

Azay-le-Rideau

From Saumur, my westernmost point, I headed back east via Azay-le-Rideau, one of the fairytale castles.  It sits in the middle of its own lake and has lots of pointy turrets where you might expect Rapunzel to stick her head out the window and empty her chamber pot.  The roof space of one wing has been opened up to show off the magnificent eaves.  French roof timbering has been classed as of exceptional cultural importance by UNESCO.  In fact, the whole Loire Valley has been classed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  It struck me that maybe UNESCO is not situated in Paris for nothing.  I stopped by Rigny-Ussé where there is a gorgeous chateau that allegedly inspired Charles Perrault to write The Sleeping Beauty.  They are milking that for all it is worth.  They wanted a whopping €14 to visit, and you can't even get into the grounds for free.  All of the chateaux charge, but usually €8 or €9. 

I veered away from the Loire to spend the night in Chinon at the Hotel Boule d'Or which is situated on a pedestrian street.  There is free parking on the riverbank, a few minutes walk from the hotel.  The town was gridlocked the day I arrived by a huge crane on the river road.  I read in the local paper over breakfast the next morning that the crane had been fishing out of the Cher a car which had been stolen from the very car park where my car had spent the night.  Fortunately it was still there when I arrived.  The hotel restaurant is called At'able (geddit?) serving a superb menu for €22.40, with excellent service by a charming young waitress who spoke good English.  I had the honour of being the first person to taste the first asparagus of the season, which came from a local supplier and melted in the mouth.   Only three tables were taken on a Good Friday evening, two by British people, one by a young American couple.  Some French people came in at 9:20 and were seated without a murmur.  There's no separate entrance to the hotel, but there's not much else to do in Chinon so unlikely you'll be out past midnight.

Chenonceau

En route to Bourges I made a detour to visit the stunning Chateau de Chenonceau which is actually on the Cher river, although generally included in the Chateaux of the Loire.  The €11 entrance charge here is entirely justified, as it is truly magnificent and extraordinarily well maintained, down to the fresh flower arrangements in every room.  If you only do one chateau in the Loire region make it this one.  It has a wing built out right across the river, which of course makes the river unnavigable.  You couldn’t get planning permission like that these days.  During the Nazi occupation of France, the Cher formed the boundary between Free France and the Occupied Zone, and resistance fighters were smuggled to safety through the basement of the Great Hall and the door that opens onto the opposite bank of the river.  Chenonceau is the most visited castle in France after Versailles, and the car park was full of tour buses.  However the gardens are vast, and there was no crush inside the castle. 

Easter floral arrangement at Chenonceau

I must say the Loire region ticked all my boxes.  The climate is temperate, the landscape is gentle and green, and the city of Tours has everything you could need, including not one but FOUR Irish bars;  property prices are alarmingly reasonable; it's an hour and a bit from Paris on the train, has good public transport (like all French towns) including a new tram network under construction, and the food is amazing.  You could eat your way round Tours every night of the year and never come back to the same restaurant twice.  Every village in the region has at least a couple of top class restaurants.  And then there is the wine. 

Oh yes, and I nearly forgot -- the chateaux.

INDIAN COUNTRY

(Wrong Indian! - Ed.)

Indian food has always been popular in the UK, going back to the days of the Raj - albeit in an Anglicized form. Kedgeree and mulligatawny soup are but two of the many delicious dishes that would be served at a Memsahib’s table back in the days of Gandhi.

Things have changed a bit since Indians started serving their food to the British back in the 1970s. It is no longer a question of a vindaloo and a pint of lager after the pub shuts. North Indian, South Indian, Goan, Kashmiri, Bengali, Mughal – going out for an Indian is no longer just a chicken korma, pilao rice and a pile of pappadoms. The British are quite au fait with Indian cuisine these days, be it the local tandoori or a Marks & Spencer ready meal eaten at home, and most of them have a fairly wide vocabulary of Indian culinary terms: naan, roti, tandoori, thali, dal, dansak, biryani, balti, saag, aloo and paneer are terms that will trip off the tongue of residents of cities almost anywhere in the UK.

We certainly know our pakora from our pappardelle and our Panini from our punani these days, for which we can thank Madhur Jaffrey the TV chef in the 1970s and Patrick Campbell, founder of the Curry Club. Even the Hairy Bikers can whip up a saag ghosht, or lamb and spinach curry, although in a Geordie accent it sounds more like an expletive. The chicken tikka masala is now, apparently, the most popular dish in the UK.

If you are a visitor to the UK and have a penchant for an authentic “Ruby Murray” as our chirpy cockney mates down in Walford would say, head for Brick Lane, near Aldgate East tube. Or if you want to go more upmarket, Veeraswamy’s on Regent Street will take you back to the glory days of the Raj. Birmingham boasts a “balti triangle” where the best balti restaurants this side of Lahore can be found, and in fact the balti – a way of cooking in individual dishes - is reputed to have been invented in that city. Birmingham, not Lahore. Whichever the type of cuisine advertised, in 99 cases out of 100 the chefs and owners will be from Bangla Desh.

Subcontinental food is becoming popular in Belgium too, if the increasing number of Indian restaurants in Brussels is anything to go by. There are now about 40 in Brussels alone. Unfortunately French gastrofascism got its garlicky fingers into Belgian culinary tradition decades ago, and anything that is not in the Larousse Gastronomique is viewed with suspicion, if not outright fear. I met a couple in Paris once who would not go to Chinese restaurants because there was no bread on the table! Indian cuisine is therefore adapted to local palates, which is not always a bad thing. The lower the chilli factor, the more you can taste the subtle blends of spices. However, some lovers of sensations fortes – mainly British men – like a degree of pain with their rogan josh. It’s a macho thing. You won’t find anything in Brussels to compare with Bradford, Leicester or Tooting Bec but have a discreet word with the waiter and most chefs here will turn the heat up a notch or two on request.

In the olden days Indian restaurants were called The Star of India or the Maharajah, and had red flock wallpaper, twangy sitar music and cooking oil drums stacked up in the corridor blocking the way to the loo. Nowadays – in the UK at least – they are all painted in neutral colours with Ikea furniture and venetian blinds and have names like “Monsoon”, “Billy Patel’s” or “Chutney Mary’s”. I blame Danny Boyle. A pair of recently arrived Yanks from the colonies agreed to join me on one phase of my search for a decent curry. “We’re going Indian hunting, cowboys. Call in the cavalry!” I quipped. The lady shuddered. “We call them Native Murkans now and they’re protected,” she said, deadpan. I had a Jeremy Clarkson moment.

We ordered a selection of samosas – two chicken, two vegetable – and a couple of onion bhajis. The samosas were fine, although not remotely spicy, more like triangular Cornish pasties, and the onion bhajis were tasty but about the size of a truffle. For main course we shared a lamb danzak, a chicken tikka masala and a vegetable curry. The lamb danzak was generally judged to be the most tasty of the three, the taste of lentils came through unswamped by fiery spices. The vegetable curry was mild but flavoursome all the same. The chicken TM was the colour of a radioactive carrot. We asked the waiter what they put in it. He insisted just paprika and general masala spices. Otis swore he could detect something like ketchup in the sauce. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the possibly apocryphal legend that the CTM was invented by a chef at the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow who whipped up an improvised sauce using a tin of Heinz tomato soup. With one garlic nan, one plain nan, and two portions of basmati rice, the whole lot came to around 26 euros a head. The waiters are smiling and nice but don’t expect the sort of expertise or banter you’d get in Sauchiehall Street.

Personally I find wine a bit wasted with curry, as it all tastes the same with the strong spices, and Indians themselves recommend drinking either beer or lassi (fermented milk) with their food. Indian beers such as Cobra and Kingfisher are brewed under licence in the UK, and have been designed especially for drinking with curry, having a lower gas content. If you follow me.

I ventured to the Koh-i-Noor on Avenue de la Chasse with another colonial, this one from the land of the long white cloud#. This small, unprepossessing establishment must have taken over the premises of a Swiss fondue chalet if the décor is anything to go by. Wood panelled walls made me feel I was inside a cuckoo clock. One little lady in a sari runs this place single handedly, she does all the cooking and serving, and goes as fast as she can, but we did wonder if the kitchen was in the same street. The place is not exactly heaving on a Friday night – in fact there were just the two of us. This would seem to be more due to lack of appreciation of Indian cuisine from the locals, or possibly the off-centre location, than on the quality of the food which, when it did arrive, was extremely good. We munched on a pappadom and worked our way through a bottle of Beaujolais while we waited for our large plate of mixed entrees, which comprised 2 samosas (one meat one veg), an onion bhaji, pieces of chicken tandoori, chicken tikka, lamb tikka, shik kebab and a little side dish of mint yogurt. By the time we’d worked our way through these, the main courses were ready: a chicken tikka masala that was reddish but didn’t glow in the dark, a lamb badam pasanda, a vegetable biryani to share and a side order of vegetables. All the food was freshly cooked, including the garlic naan which was the best I have tasted anywhere. A second bottle of Beaujolais at 17 euros was required due to the slow service, which whacked the bill up a bit to just over 40 euros a head, but I cannot fault the food which was delicious.

The third in my trio of Indians is Annapurna on Rue de Laeken which advertises Indian, Bengali, Tibetan and Nepalese dishes, and is named after one of the highest peaks of the Himalayas. I popped in for a quick standard menu (samosas - chicken tikka masala - basmati rice) with a French friend. The waiters are sweet and speak good English, although they can barely speak French. It was quite busy, and they obviously weren’t used to dealing with a full house. We tried to channel the patience of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing on the first conquest of Everest while waiting for the food, but we had the impression that base camp was quite a long way down. It finally dawned on them that they’d forgotten us. Some panicking in the kitchen, and we finally got our meal - which was delicious. I can’t fault the food, but avoid it on a weekend, they haven’t quite come to terms with their own success, yet.

Indian restaurants here are somewhat timid in their cooking, and in none of these three did the waft of curry spices hit you as soon as you walked in. If you are a novice where Indian food is concerned, Brussels is probably a good place to start. If you are a Brit desperate for a really good curry, London is only two hours away on Eurostar.

Spicy Grill

Rue Stevin 102
1040 Etterbeek
Tel: 02 512 25 05
http://www.spicygrill.be

Koh-i-Noor
Avenue de la Chasse 123
1040 Etterbeek
Tel: 02 736 50 22
http://restaurantkohinoor.be

Annapurna
Rue de Laeken 26
1000 Bruxelles
Tel: 02 219 3933
http://web.resto.com/annapurna/

Veeraswamy’s
Swallow Street
(off Regent Street)
London W1
Tel : +44 20 7734 1401
http://www.veeraswamy.com/