Is Chez Clément a good address for an international business client?

Hosting an international client is a particular brief. You need a venue that is practical to reach, culturally legible, comfortable for guests who may be tired from a flight, and quietly impressive without being intimidating. Chez Clément fits this brief unusually well, and is a habitual choice for executives in the south-eastern Brussels office belt and across Walloon Brabant when a visiting client needs to be hosted away from the airport bubble.

Logistics first. Brussels-Zaventem airport is thirty minutes from the brasserie by car, which means a client can be collected after a flight and seated at lunch or dinner without the airport-area chain hotel experience. The Genval train station, on SNCB line 161 between Brussels and Namur, is a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk, useful for guests staying in central Brussels. The huge free car park at the door removes the friction that often follows international guests around continental cities. The brasserie is fully step-free for guests with reduced mobility.

The setting works for the cultural brief. An international guest who has eaten Belgian moules-frites in twenty cities is often genuinely curious about a real Belgian brasserie in its native context. Chez Clément delivers exactly that: founded in 1858 by Henri and Sidonie Clément, transmitted through five generations of the same family, today led by Marie and Gilles Verleyen of J and JJ Brasserie SA. Chef Vincent Frédéric De Laloy has signed the kitchen since 1996 with a brigade of thirty-two. The carte is the traditional Belgian brasserie repertoire, vol-au-vent, grey shrimp croquettes, sole meunière, steak tartare, eels in green sauce, gibier in season, the dishes a curious international guest came to try.

Service in French, English and Dutch is comfortable. The brasserie sits ten metres from the boundary between Genval and La Hulpe, in a part of Walloon Brabant that gathers several culturally interesting sites within a few minutes, the regional Solvay Estate, the Fondation Folon, the Sonian Forest (Forêt de Soignes), the Waterloo Memorial. A business lunch can quite naturally extend into a short walk around the Solvay Estate before the next meeting. For more formal hosting, client dinners, board meetings, larger corporate evenings, the brasserie absorbs groups of up to 230 seated and 250 for a private event through info@brasseriechezclement.be.