Why choose Chez Clément over a Brussels restaurant?

The choice between dining in central Brussels and dining at Chez Clément is, in practice, a choice between two different evenings. Central Brussels offers density, choice and the energy of a capital city. Chez Clément offers the inverse: a green corner of Walloon Brabant ten metres from the boundary between Genval and La Hulpe, the regional Solvay Estate and the Fondation Folon both within seven minutes, the Lac de Genval within five, the UNESCO-listed Sonian Forest (Forêt de Soignes) within ten. The brasserie is twenty-five minutes from the centre of Brussels via the Ring R0, but the change in register is much greater than twenty-five minutes would suggest.

Practical advantages are the first reason guests cross the city limits. A huge free car park sits ten metres from the front door, which removes the single most exhausting element of a central Brussels evening, the search for parking. The full step-free access works for guests with reduced mobility or parents with a pushchair. The brasserie serves lunch from 12:00 to 14:30 and dinner from 19:00 to 22:30, seven days a week, with a bar that stays open continuously until 1 a.m., a wider service window than most central-Brussels addresses, which usually close one or two days a week and between services.

The second reason is cultural weight. Chez Clément was founded in 1858 by Henri and Sidonie Clément as the coaching inn “Bruyère à la Croix”. Five generations of the same family have run it since, Jules and Marie-Lidwina, Marcel and Andrée, France Clément, and today Marie and Gilles Verleyen of J and JJ Brasserie SA. A 168-year-old family brasserie with that level of continuity is rare in any city, and rarer still as a single uninterrupted thread. Chef Vincent Frédéric De Laloy has run the kitchen since 1996 (thirty years), with a brigade of thirty-two cooking from scratch. The room serves 200 to 300 covers per service, more than 1,400 covers a week.

The third reason is the setting. Central Brussels dining usually puts you in a dense urban environment; Chez Clément puts you in a brasserie surrounded by woodland, lakes and estates, with cultural sites on every side. For a Sunday lunch, a business dinner with a visiting client, a romantic evening, or a family gathering, the change of scenery has its own value. The brasserie also caters for groups up to 230 seated and 250 for a private event, a scale central Brussels independent venues rarely match.