The Four Belgian Food Groups

Our tour guide Adrien basically claimed that there are four critical food groups in Belgium: waffles, fries, chocolate, and beer. So…here’s everything you need to know about each one:

Waffles: The European Chocolate Chip Cookie

Waffles are not totally a uniquely Belgian thing; you can find waffles for sale at bakeries, grocery stores, vending machines in France and the Netherlands too. Liège waffles—the most common kind—have large pearls of sugar in the batter that kind of caramelize when the waffle is cooked. You can get your waffles topped with just about anything, and there is no judgement, but Nutella is the most common. Most of the waffle shops around Brussels are, in my opinion, tourist traps; they just reuse the waffles they didn’t sell the day before, so you’re not really getting a fresh waffle. The best place to buy a waffle is actually from a truck (because they don’t have any space to store and re-use excess wafflery). The waffles sold in the grocery stores aren’t frozen and they have a pretty long shelf life—they are what Famous Amos is to homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Fries: Fried, But Not French

First, it’s just “fries” or “frites,” not “French fries” or “Belgian fries” because nobody really knows who invented them and they aren’t referred to that way on any menu. Fries made properly are fried twice, first at a lower temperature, then at a higher temperature, to obtain maximum crisp and flavor. Beef tallow is traditionally used (so a lot of fries in Belgium aren’t vegetarian), but many places use vegetable oil, and asking which one they use is not an uncommon question.

Chocolate: Big Government is Sometimes Good

Why is Belgian chocolate so famous? Because there are laws that require anything sold as “chocolate” to fit certain specifications. Chocolate in Belgium is so good because it is pure; it doesn’t contain anything else besides the basic ingredients of chocolate (cacao, cocoa butter, sugar, maybe milk), a few choice stabilizers or oils (but never palm oil), and the occasional flavoring like vanilla or salt. There are over 200 independent chocolatiers in Belgium, but I would recommend Mary (shops all around Belgium) or Elisabeth (they’re not all named after women, but these two are!). Mary was named the first official chocolatier for the Belgian royal family over a century ago and the shops have some beautiful boxes of truffles (in Belgium called pralines). My personal favorite was Elisabeth, especially these bags of 80% chocolate squares.

Beer: More Important Than Water

My favorite Belgian beer, the Saison Dupont (organic too!)

I have left beer for last because, unlike the previous three food groups, beer is not only a tourist attraction or cultural symbol, it is a huge part of the daily life of many people who live in Belgium. In France, I saw a lot of couples at cafés and the men would have beer and the women would have wine. In Belgium, everyone drinks beer, and beer is free of the stereotypes it sometimes carries. Everyone drinks beer all day, every day, and beer is sold just about everywhere, from convenience stores to cafés to bars to museum gift shops.

La Chouffe ("the dwarf")

The primary reason Belgian beers are so famous is the sheer variety, 80% of which are not sold outside Belgium. In most other countries, the beer industry is monopolized by fewer larger breweries because the smaller breweries weren’t able to survive the two world wars. Thanks to Belgium’s early and extensive rail system (enabling beer to be distributed more widely across the country and helping improve smaller breweries’ profits) and less damage incurred during wartime, Belgium’s small breweries were able to last. As such, there is an extremely wide variety of styles of Belgian beer—Adrien told us that any person can find at least one Belgian beer they like and one they hate.

There are a couple of styles of beer found in Belgium that we don’t see very much in the U.S. For example, white beers taste like wheaty lemonade and tend to be lower in alcohol (3-5%). Krieks, or cherry beers, taste almost like hard cider and are bright red and served in glasses that look like test tubes.

Bottles of cherry beer in a convenience store

And that’s another thing—the glasses. Each beer is supposed to be served in a specific glass to maximize aroma and taste, so when you order a beer, there’s a good chance it will be delivered to you in a glass emblazoned with the name of the beer. My favorites are generally crisp blondes: I recommend La Chouffe (French for dwarf), the Saison Dupont (my absolute favorite, an organic version is also available, which is a plus!), the Chimay Bleu, and the Westmalle Trippel.

The Westmalle Trippel, a Belgian classic and a Trappist beer

You’ll see that some beers are designated as “Trappist” beers; this has nothing to do with the style of the actual beer. This means that the beer was made by monks in a Trappist monastery (they are scattered across western Europe and there’s even one in New England) and profits from the sale of the beer are donated to charity (the monks have taken a vow of poverty). So, as Adrien said, if you drink a Trappist beer, you can enjoy it knowing that you are making the world a better place!

The Chimay Bleu, another Trappist beer (note the "Pères Trappistes" on the label)