- the belgian beer cafe bluestone -

sauntered down to the Belgian Beer Cafe Bluestone on St Kilda Rd last night, to have dinner with Peter P in honour of his "27"th birthday.

he said he wanted to try something "different", since he said he eats chinese stuff all the time and hadn't tried much in the way of foods from non-asian cultures - so i found the BBC Bluestone. somewhere relatively nice, with Belgian-French cuisine and classy belgian beers of all kinds. only it turns out that Peter isn't much of a beer drinker. whoops.

the menu was rather wow, boasting interesting things like escargot, stoemp (which is a traditional belgian dish of mashed potato-carrot-bacon), boudin blanc sausages, hoegaarden and roquefort-style mussel pots, Flemish carbonnade (a kind of Flemish-Belgian beef and beer stew), and belgian mousse and proper creme brulee and imported belgian chocolates. (well, i figured Peter should try some nice food without going too far up the posh end.)

we should have gone with more people. (my brother was unwilling to participate in the night, having an assignment due. pah.) Peter wanted to try things like escargot and one of the mussel pots, but I'm not much of one for snails or clam-like things, and he didn't want to eat them all by himself, so he ended up settling for Pork Belly and Stoemp. i thought the boudin blanc sausage sounded nice, so i went with that.

Peter seemed vaguely surprised that the Pork Belly tasted just like Siu Yook (Roast Pork). well, duh. siu yook is pork belly done roast style. ^-^ ah, Peter, you so need to learn more about western (especially european!) cuisine if you don't want to be the doof randomly pointing at numbers on a gwai-lo menu when you see your favourite Liz in Paris or Texas.. ;)

despite my initial apprehension at seeing green on the sausage (which turned out to be fresh leaves of baby spinach worked into the sossie), the boudin blanc was gorgeous. the one at the BBC Bluestone is the french version, made with smooth pork meat (possibly heart.. yikes) pureed and blended with milk, which gave it a really lovely velvety sort of texture.

oh! and i tried beer! (because Carmen's boyo, Nut, said you can't go to a belgian beer cafe and then NOT have beer, hahaha.. dude, i went to the german Lowenbrau Keller and didn't even try their non-alcoholic version!!)

so i went and tried one called the Hoegaarden Forbidden Fruit, but unfortunaltely there was no apple involved, it was apparently a pretty strong beer (8% alcohol!) and kind of red-coloured like wine. served in it's own special signature wine-glass-shaped.. glass. Peter was transfixed by the way the waiter came up & poured the beer for me, holding it up to the light.

it was okay, but, y'know.. beery.

Peter tried the Hoegaarden White which Nut had recommended, and apparently he liked it. so there you go, people. if you're not into beer, the Hoegaarden White may pleasantly surprise you.

unfortunately by the end of it all, we were too full to try the desserts.. so if anyone out there wants to try out the BBC Bluestone.. give me a buzz and i'll come with! and possibly drag Pete & Liz along, too ^-^

and Happy "27"th Birthday for today, Peter P!