Belga Cafe, Washington, D.C.

To celebrate what will probably be my only Restaurant Week experience this week, my friend Bob and I ventured down to the Barracks Row section of Capitol Hill to lunch at Belga Cafe today. What a fun place!

Belga (the G is hard, as in 'gate') Cafe opened around Halloween last year in that Eighth Street strip of southeast Washington, right by the Shakespeare Theater administrative offices. The chef-owner is the young, tall, and very handsome Bart Vandaele, a Belgian national who has been cooking in various diplomatic venues in the District since about 2000. We saw him quite a bit at lunch today, since the kitchen is designed to be completely open to view so we could see him cooking, and he also came out into the dining room several times, sometimes to greet guests, sometimes to do work (once we saw him straightening askew chairs on the front patio). He was wearing an unusually cut white chef's jacket, but instead of the traditional houndstooth patterned trousers, he wore blue jeans.

The restaurant itself is very deep and narrow, with a patio on the front sidewalk which looked to seat about two dozen. Inside, a large bar occupied the center of a bare-brick wall and on the other side of the bar stretched the large display kitchen. The contemporary tables were bare with geometric-patterned taupe placemats at each seat. Each table also had a bottle of wine (available for purchase) and, rather inexplicably, a single, fresh lemon. The wait staff was clad in black trousers, long black aprons, and black collared shirts with the sleeves rolled up. The bartender (an incredibly cute, tossel-haired, blond boy worth a special trip just to gaze upon) wore a tight pearl gray t-shirt. It was a good thing we had reservations, cause even at 1:00, the restaurnant was completely packed, inside and out, and when we left at 2:30, the place was still nearly full inside.

Our first big decision was picking a beverage. In Belgium, people take their beer very, very seriously, just like the French with their wines. Their beer list had about four dozen Belgian beers! Not being a big beer person, I had to follow Bob's lead on what to drink. He's lived in Belgium before (State Department posting), so he knew his way around the menus. We opted to go with the beers on tap. The first one we had was a Hoegaarden, which was a very pale, cloudy beer with a light taste that was slightly lemony. By the time our entrees were served, we had our second beer, which was a Leffe Blonde, which had a deeper amber color and more of a distinctly hop taste to it (and which was my preference of the two).

While many things on the menu were intriguing, we had gone there to experience the special three course $20.05 prix fixe menu that had been created just for Restaurant Week. The first course was called "Red and Green." We were given long, white rectangular plates. On one end was a cross-section slice of a roulade of romaine hearts with goat cheese and herbs between the lettuce leaves, with a thin, crisp, savory wafer balanced across the top. On the other end was a ball of diced red tomato and tiny little grey shrimp in a mayonnaise garnished with a piece of sun-dried tomato and an artistic wad of long-stemmed tiny clover. In the center was a scattering of tiny grey shrimp resting on a squiggle of sauce which reminded me a bit of a hoisin sauce. The plate was very pretty and carefully arranged. I particularly liked the tomato and shrimp salad.

For the main course, I was very tempted to have the pot of mussels (mussels are a Belgian specialty), but we both ended up ordering the biefstuk van de beenhouwer, which is grilled hanger steak. Lots of Americans are not completely familiar with this cut of beef, and often confuse it with a flank steak or skirt steak (fajita meat), yet in actuality, the hanger steak is the remnant of the cow's diaphragm where it attaches to the muscle wall just below the last rib. I've always found the cut very good when properly marinated and cooked, but the "grain" and feel of the beef is just a little different from standard steaks and roasts. Belga's steak was just what I was expecting--juicy, flavorful, and nearly fork-tender. A bearnaise sauce made with beer accompanied the steak. Along with the meat, there was an ample serving of roasted vegetables, including peas, carrots, green beans, and leeks on the plate, and a paper cone in a unique spiral holder held the hot Belgian fries (what we call liberty fries or "French fries" actually originated in Belgium). People gush about Belgian fries, but I can't say that I was wowwed by these. They were good, though, and I used my bearnaise as a dipping sauce instead of the Belgian-traditional mayonnaise.

A strawberry, peach, and beer soup with fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and cape gooseberries floating in the soup and highlighted with an egg-shaped scoop of very tart apricot sorbet was our dessert. Cape gooseberries are a little bit unusual, and I've not been served them anywhere else in D.C. For those who've never had them, they look a lot like small yellow cherry tomatoes and they have an interesting taste that is sort of a cross between a tomato and pineapple. This was a fun dessert, and I loved the sorbet and how it made me pucker. Dessert was followed by espresso and coffee with cream.

Our waitress was very helpful, pleasant, and informative. There were also a number of other waiters involved in bringing our food to us at various times. My only big complaint with the service, though, was when our salad plates were removed, the waiter took our salad fork and salad knife off the plate and laid them down on the bare table. You would think that a restaurant of this calibre could manage to bring us clean flatware for each course.

We're certainly looking forward to another visit to Belga Cafe. There are lots and lots of very intriguing items on the menu, including foie de canard (smoked and poached duck liver pate), lobster hamburger, leg of rabbit braised in red ale beer, pan-seared salsify, asparagus fritters with asparagus ice cream, and a Belgian endive tart, not to mention forty-some more beers to try.

Belga Cafe, 514 Eighth Street Southeast, near Eastern Market Metro.