Mediterranean cuisine restaurants Bruxelles - Brussel

Restaurant-wine bar specializing in tasty and authentic Italian dishes. You can choose from a hanging board, as if you were shopping at the market! The white tablecloths set the tone, the cooking is fair, without unnecessary fuss. The ingredients taste as they are, without unnecessary or prolonged processing or cooking. You might as well say that we like it! Caffè al Dente also has a shop next door. Unique wines to discover on the spot or to take away, fine and exquisite products coming directly from the Peninsula.

Georgios' welcome is cordial. The numerous mezze are to be tasted and shared in the Greek way, at the table. Fresh products, crispy bread served hot, excellent olives, olive oil and spices make the specialties where the octopus regularly stands out. There is also the Cretan dakos (toasted bread, goat cheese and tomato puree), ktipiti or tyropita, a spinach or cheese pastry. Seafood and kebabs round off an already extensive menu, which is complemented by some very good Greek wines.

The cuisine balances quite well between creative proposals and a traditional menu. The fish arrives twice a day, the pasta, bread and desserts are made in-house and the pizza maker turns his dough in front of the customers! The wine list has a hundred labels from all over Italy and the bottles are displayed in an enoteca style. We point out an excellent prosecco as a homemade aperitif and we slide our feet under the terrace table to enjoy the garden. A reproduction of the Venetian painter Carpaccio hangs on the wall.

I might as well say it straight away, the colonnades and the traditional dances have no place. Here, the generosity of the plate prevails. Roasted meats are recommended, while the menu combines traditional dishes with local dishes. On the menu, for example, a stewed lamb in Kokinisto with creamy tomato. To accompany it, you can choose between French fries and gratin dauphinois. The crusty bread is served with tarama. Reasonably priced Greek wines and fast service at lunchtime. Upstairs, large groups are welcomed with a certain intimacy.

In a decor inspired by Venetian brasseries, the atmosphere is relaxed. It's a change from the rather basic student barsor the Asian restaurants in the neighbourhood. The pizzas are made over a wood fire and go perfectly with the wines that the owner produces in Campania. It is not by chance that this "Italian dream" has been a reference for lovers of pizza, antipasti, fresh pasta and other Italian specialities for almost 40 years. The suggestions are also there. Note that it is open 7 days a week, as you may well spend a day there.

One can easily recognize the quality of the products, directly imported from Sardinia to this pretty little canteen! Moreover, the menu is short, a sign of their freshness, with 2 or 4 pasta dishes and a meat... to which we must add a nice list of crispy pizzas ! Charm, authenticity... even for the greediest. Opened in 2012 by Roberto Casula, La Bottega della Pizza has won numerous awards, including Best Pizza Maker in Belgium by Foodprint. Only twenty covers, so remember to make a reservation.^2nd address in the Sablon.

A neighborhood address as we like them, with a pair of talented hands in the kitchen, and the owner in the dining room, talkative and friendly with his dear customers. A little word for everyone and an eye for everything. The word of mouth has been going on for years for a clientele from the neighborhood or from farther away. The menu joyfully mixes pizzas, pastas and some regional specialties such as swordfish Sicilian style, ossobuco Milanese style, calamari Romana style. Everything is made on the spot with fresh products, and everything can be taken away.

With Norma, Giacomo and Massimiliano, both from Friuli, wanted to highlight the art of grandmotherly cooking: homemade pasta (they make their own flour) with products from small local and Italian producers of course, sauces that have simmered for a long time, simple and noble ingredients (you can smell the truffle when you enter the trattoria). The short menu where pasta is the star varies every week. The aperitivo is the other strong point with appetizing plates that are accompanied by a well-chosen wine or a negroni.

In Italy, there are restaurants and there are trattorias, these modest, often family-run establishments, where the cuisine is tasty and without fuss. L'Olivier, a stone's throw from the Place du Miroir in Jette, is of this type and specialises in pasta (with wheat or eggs) and veal escalopes (no less than 7 types) for a tight bill. And it's all homemade. Salvatore, the boss, is at the stove, and cooks like his mother taught him. A casalinga cuisine, then. Nice backyard and catering/takeaway service, if you don't have time.

Here is a restaurant that announces the color: Così Com'è means "as is" and indeed, no fuss in the establishment of Antonia and Enrico. Originally from Puglia, they have brought a bit of their land into the room (with bows representing trulli, but above all, the love of pasta and pizza. There are about thirty of them, including the famous, and much maligned, Hawaiian pizza. We won't hold it against them. Here, no frills, we eat traditional and simply good pizzas. There is a takeaway and catering area and a good selection of wines.

We often tend to reduce Spanish gastronomy to tapas and paella. But it's much more than that! In the chic, yet relaxed restaurant run by Adrian Mancheño, all the flavours of his native land are highlighted on the plate: octopus with paprika potatoes, marinated Iberian pork, Asturian bean stew, Galician beef entrecote with peppers, rice dessert... Your taste buds are wriggling! No wonder it was voted best Brussels restaurant in 2019! Don't hesitate to push the door of the hotel where it is located.

Uccle Calevoet looks like a big village, and that's where Filipe decided to open a neighborhood restaurant in the noblest sense of the word. Although the restaurant is brand new, it already has its regulars, and that's a good sign. Filipe highlights his Italian-Portuguese origins in a menu that changes according to his moods. The pizzas remain the constants, while the rest varies from linguine vongole to pasteis de nata, without neglecting French and seasonal cuisine (game in autumn). The plates are generous, cooked just like at home.

Uniko is the osteria e vinoteca sister of Ricotta and Parmesan. The concept of Italian-style tapas has changed a little. You still start with one of the superb aperitif boards, then pick from the various starters (parmigiana, focaccia...), but there's now a list of dishes (risotti, pasta, lasagne and polenta). You can even choose pasta stuffed with the sauce of your choice. You can accompany all this with a wine from one of the 90 labels on offer. A trendy decor, with glass wine-cans as lighting fixtures.

Would we have arrived in Sorrento, sitting on an azure or lemon yellow bench? It almost seems like it! What is sure, is that we are in the den of pasta fresca, the real home made. Spaghetti alla chitarra, pappardelle, tagliatelle... The chef and Mario, the owner, match the type of pasta with the sauce. And the recipes are inventive; toscanella with sausage crumble and red wine, terramare with scampi flambéed with negroni and 'nduja. Piatti sociali as an aperitif and a nice wine and cocktail list will fill you with felicità.

In a pretty corner house, Suada and Edin welcome you to this cosy little restaurant, where dishes are prepared in the pure Italian tradition: simply, but with the finest products. Alessio and Milva are in the kitchen, preparing fresh pasta and delicious pizzas (cooked over a wood fire), as well as meat and fish secondi (saltimbocca, osso bucco, Lombardy-style sea bass fillet...) in generous portions. The hardest part will be choosing, especially when it comes to pizzas and pastas - the list is long and tempting.

If the low, wet clouds of our belgian lifestyle tire you out some days, head for the Nato in Evere and grab a bite to eat at Sole di Napoli. True lovers of Mediterranean cuisine, the owners, originally from Naples, have left the dolce vita to bring it back to you on the menu and on the plate. All dishes are made fresh from carefully selected ingredients. The result is as tasty as it is colorful. Sole di Napoli, a unique concentration of the peninsula's many culinary delights!

Eltin opened in a pretty Brussels house in 2023 (on the site of the former Tea Jolie). The new owners have inherited the cosy atmosphere of the place: tiled floor, huge ceiling, fireplace... The perfect place to enjoy a good cup of coffee or tea. The big change is the menu: here, Mediterranean cuisine reigns supreme: Chektchouka, garlic scampi, anchovy toast... But Eltin's brunch and tea time are in the pure British tradition, with clotted cream, sandwiches and pastries.

Since 1990, Dal Padrino has been delighting a Eurocrat clientele (given its location a stone's throw from the Commission) and local regulars in the plush atmosphere of a bourgeois house. The cuisine is refined, with fine proposals such as tagliolini with oyster mushrooms and bacon, swordfish with messinese sauce and truffle carpaccio. Not forgetting a Sardinian touch (fregola with clams and scampi and Sardinian ham and melon) that betrays the owners' origins. And if you still have room, wait until you've seen the dessert cart!

At Rino's, the setting is more contemporary than ever, with furniture and decoration in keeping with today's tastes, far from the usual transalpine clichés. But as for the menu, we are talking about a cuisine where the products of the Botte are magnified! For example, the spaghetti carbonara is prepared with pancetta and no cream is added! The establishment also offers delicious pizzas. Cesarino doesn't mess around with his restaurant! You'd almost forget that he set up the restaurant back in 2009, in the bustling Cimetière d'Ixelles district.

Philippe Absil wanted to recreate a little bit of Milan, the city he loves, not far from the Parc du Cinquantenaire. We find the pleasure of tasting a good "caffé" with a croissant, quickly done before going to work, to buy a panino to take away during the lunch break or to taste the pasta of the day or the dishes prepared by the chef Valerio for those who have more time... The menu is short but that allows the chef to concentrate on the essential. We take a seat under the gaze of Marlon Brando, perhaps around the large wooden table?

In 2022, Le Coq en Pâte celebrated a double anniversary: the 50th anniversary of the opening of the restaurant by the Bacchetta family and the 20th anniversary of the takeover by their son Olivier, who is also the chef. A nice longevity for an Italian restaurant that leans resolutely towards the gastro side of Italian cuisine. The setting is warm and relaxed but it is in the plate that the creativity of the chef is discovered: a play of colors, textures and flavors and dishes prepared with precision. We fall for the 30 month old parmesan ravioli or the veal sweetbreads with morels.