What is Chef Vincent's signature dish at Chez Clément?

Every chef who stays in the same kitchen for decades develops one or two dishes that become a personal emblem. For Vincent Frédéric De Laloy, head chef at Chez Clément since 1996, that dish is the cabillaud florentine. It is the item regulars order without thinking, the one new customers are quietly told to try by the maître d'hôtel, and the one that has earned the brasserie a reputation that travels beyond Genval and La Hulpe.

The dish itself sits squarely in the French classical tradition. « Florentine » refers to a preparation built around spinach, generally bound with a Mornay or Béchamel sauce, gratinated to finish. Pair that bed with a piece of cod, cabillaud in French, and you have a dish that, when executed properly, is both deeply comforting and technically demanding. Everything depends on the cooking of the fish (precisely flaking, not dry), on the spinach (well-drained, not watery), on the sauce (smooth, not floury), and on the gratin (golden, not burnt). Each of these points is the kind of detail Vincent's classical training and family Michelin heritage prepared him to control.

The cabillaud florentine became Vincent's signature precisely because it captures everything he stands for. It is not a fashionable dish. It does not chase the latest plate-design trend. It is a classical brasserie item executed with the rigour of a starred kitchen, stocks made from scratch, sauce produced on site in his everything-made-in-house philosophy, fish cooked to order. For a curious British visitor, it is also the perfect entry point into the Belgian brasserie register: French technique, Belgian comfort, no marketing gimmicks.

The dish is on the carte year-round, one of the five signatures around which the seasonal rotation pivots (spring asparagus, autumn game, mussels in season; Belgian classics from the repertoire according to chef Vincent's suggestions). Regulars who came in 2000 will recognise the same dish in 2026 with the same hand behind it. That continuity is what a thirty-year tenure makes possible, and it is what makes the cabillaud florentine a signature dish, not merely a popular menu item.

Beyond the cabillaud florentine, the official summer 2026 carte explicitly marks eight further signature dishes (flagged on the menu with a « ♥ ») that chef Vincent carries as house essentials: sole meunière, free-range yellow chicken supreme with tarragon sauce and croquettes, meatloaf with stoemp and vegetables, Italian-style beef tartare (with parmesan, pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes), 250g beef fillet, house cheese fondue, house-made grey shrimp croquettes with fried parsley and lemon, and the artichoke salad with grey shrimp and green beans. Together with the cabillaud florentine, these nine dishes form the identity core of the carte. The seasonal rotation completes the repertoire without ever displacing the signatures. The cabillaud florentine remains, however, the signature by which chef Vincent himself is identified.