Revelations: finding good coffee in Brussels

Despite the large Italian community in Brussels, sometimes it is hard to find good coffee in this city. When you ask for a cappuccino, you can actually get a black coffee with whipped cream (!!). When you politely try to complain, they say it's a "Belgian cappuccino". And you wonder if you just took a time machine to the early 1990s... 

However, with the help of my "500 hidden secrets of Brussels" guidebook and coffee-loving friends, I've been able to find a few spots with excellent coffee in Brussels. Going to these cafés is my weekend pleasure here. 

The top three places for excellent coffee in Brussels are definitely:

1. Aksum Coffee House, no. 132 in the list of "The 5 best coffee bars in Brussels"

This Ethiopian place is my favorite café for sure. It's in a beautiful green house close to the Grand Place. Their coffee made with Ethiopian beans is just fantastic and the cakes they serve are also delicious. They do organise Ethiopian coffee ceremonies at request and probably you can order an Ethiopian style coffee any time, but so far I've only had Italian style caffe lattes. Of course, the Ethiopian jazz in the background is just about the perfect choice for Sunday coffee moments.

2. Parlor Coffee, no. 131 in the list of "The 5 best coffee bars in Brussels"

Parlor  Coffee has a nice Nordic vibe in the ugly and noisy Chaussée de Charleroi in Saint-Gilles. Besides good coffee, they also serve nice small things to eat. I had a veggie bagel that wasn't a mind-blowing experience but suitable for a light Saturday lunch.

3. Or Coffee, no. 134 in the list of "The 5 best coffee bars in Brussels"

Or Coffee has two cafés in Brussels, one in the Dansaert quartier in the centre and the other one at Place Jourdan. I've only been to the latter one. It's a great spot for working as well; there are too few places like this in the city. 

Too bad the Place Jourdan branch is closed on Saturdays, it would be a perfect place to go after my Saturday yoga class next door.

It does matter!

Was I obsessed about coffee already before living in Italy? Not to the extent I am nowadays, that's for sure. In fact, I started drinking coffee in Brussels as a 19 year-old au pair. A decade ago you didn't find all these fancy Italian types of coffee in Finland, so when I tried the Belgian version of caffe latte, lait russe, in Brussels, I got into coffee drinking (I also learnt to drink beer here) and eventually was happy with the Finnish filter coffee as well.

But after the Italian coffee there is no going back to filter coffees or such. I have to say that I really liked the American way of having a half a litre of coffee in the morning with a muffin but when I returned back to Florence I realised what I had been missing. The Italian coffee culture never stopped delighting me. Still after 2 years in Florence, I learnt new ways of ordering coffee: cappuccino chiaro, macchiato freddo, orzo, ristretto in vetro… It was usual to order a different coffee for each person when a group of us was having the after-lunch coffee at our terrace in the hill of Fiesole (but summer-time favourite was always caffe con ghiaccio, coffee with ice). And though people back home just think that I've become a snob, it does matter!

Now I'm back in Brussels where my coffee history started. However, I'm a different person than back then - at least when it comes to coffee drinking. The often tepid lait russe comes with big chunks of sugar that won't melt into the coffee and the Belgian baristas (if they could even deserve this nomination) don't know what a cappuccino is (it's not a lungo with milk foam!). And they then serve it with cocoa powder, obligatorily. I miss those old guys working in the Italian bars, the hard-working man who creates a rose in the milk foam of your coffee without even thinking of it. There you are sipping your delicious coffee in a random bar in a backstreet of Florence, or any other city in Italy, the neighbouring customers in their dusty overalls holding a tiny espresso cup with their little finger up and tasting some miniature pastry (only an Italian worker can do something like this without losing his masculinity in the eyes of his colleagues).

Bialetti's little man ordering a coffee the Italian way, a finger up in the air.

In the cantine of my workplace in Brussels, you can order 'espresso Illy', I guess otherwise the espresso is made out of some shitty coffee. I pay the extra 13 cents. There are no Italian style bars around, no place to have a quick coffee, but well, would I pay 2,50 euros for an espresso that I got for 80 cents in Italy? I've started to be fastidious in Finland as well when it comes to coffee (or ice cream, or pasta, pizza, mozzarella, wine or anything related to cucina Italiana), but the Belgian coffee is of the worst kind. It's hard to believe of a city as international as Brussels, but even the Italian places here are serving their Belgian customers the local way.

To end with a positive note, the service in Brussels is very friendly. It might be slow, inefficient and not even very professional, but the people are indeed very nice and polite. This is harder to say about Florence where I had to work my way to be a respected customer worth a smile in my local coffee bar. On my next trip to Italy, I will finally buy myself a Bialetti moka pot (even though it will never replace the feeling of shouting the order in an Italian bar on a busy weekday morning).