April 10, 2008
By: Brian Freedman
bfreedman@aroundphilly.com
Godfather II--with not one but two incarnations of Michael Corleone--was a great sequel. Beethoven’s beautiful, lush Symphony Number 2 was a clear standout. Rae and Osteria, the second restaurants of two of the city’s best chefs, command the respect of even the most jaded palates in town.
Yes, follow-up efforts can, when all the elements and just the right amount of magic coalesce in a single (and singular) time and place, prove just as successful as the originals that inspired them.
But that magic seems to have eluded Belgian Café, the Fairmount-neighborhood offshoot to the beloved and nothing-if-not-magical Monk’s Café.
Not that it’s a bad place--not at all. It’s just that Belgian Café, in more ways than one, lacks the sense of grotto-like warmth and Belgium-by-way-of-Philly excitement of that landmark original. No matter how many dishes I taste, and no matter how much I want to fall in love, the Café resists my entreaties.
Most of this has to do with the food, which, while not bad, rarely seems to come together the way either the menu leads you to believe or the Café’s pedigree would cause you to expect.
Doppelbock-marinated tofu (in this case, nutty Spaten Optimator provided the focal point) that the menu described as being stuffed with cilantro, cherries, garlic, and cashews, was little more than mediocre slabs of bean curd sandwiching a rather boring, tapenade-textured spread of the advertised elements. The bed of spinach beneath it all was pleasant, but certainly not enough to rescue the dish.
Babyback ribs, while tender, were oddly oily. They were also mostly devoid of flavor, as the barbecue sauce with which they were coated (the menu says “slathered”; I think that’s overstating things) possessed about as much personality as Seacrest’s first-season American Idol co-host (what was that guy’s name, anyway?). As with the tofu, the accompaniments--here, a bright, snappy endive slaw and a pitch-perfect cornbread--brought some sense of interest to an otherwise ho-hum dish, but not nearly as much as it required.
The Monk’s burger suffered from both underseasoning--a cardinal and still-surprisingly common sin even at the best ground-beef spots--and over-charring. The former fault resulted in a sandwich that had to lean too heavily on its accompanying layers of blue cheese and caramelized leeks, and the latter in a patty possessed of an oddly mineral, overwhelmingly charred exterior that covered up any sense of nuance the beef itself had once had.
A bowl of aromatic van Eyck mussels, plump, sweet, and generously perfumed with herbs and Piraat Belgian Ale, was a rare, full-fledged success. Bite-sized chunks of garlic sausage added even more heft to the mollusks than they already had, and herbes de Provence brought a whiff of subtlety. But Memling mussels, too briny from an overabundance of capers and strangely fishy from the shrimp, were far from enjoyable.
Even desserts missed the mark, and they’re not even made at the Café. Most upsetting was the pecan pie, which would have been far better had it been served anywhere near room temperature. As it was, it seemed to have been removed right from the fridge and brought out to the table--neither confidence-building in terms of effort nor sensible in regard to how its constituent flavors might have best expressed themselves.
At least the beer is good. In fact, I’d take that a step further: The selection of beer is remarkable. Gulden Draak, a white-bottled beauty adorned with a golden-hued dragon, packed a far subtler punch than its 10.5 percent alcohol by volume would seem to indicate, and offered a nearly infinite well of flavor with each sip. Also notable was the Fantome Chocolat, a Belgian saison brewed with cocoa and chili powder. (It’s not nearly as off-beat as that suggests.)
Personally, I find myself much happier at the Belgian Café when sitting at the bar with a beer I’ve never heard of before and an order of frites (they come with the classic Bourbon mayonnaise and a wonderfully smoky homemade ketchup, but it’s worth ordering, for $1 more each, little side cups of both the dill mayo and the lime chili mayo). It’s a warmer space than the relatively cavernous dining room (this despite the art-nouveau images adorning the walls), and much more conducive to focusing on what really matters: At Belgian Café, the beer’s the thing. Everything else, it seems, is mostly a distraction.
