Mussels and fries is a traditional Belgian dish. All over the city there are restaurants offering this dish for varying low prices [around 11 or 12 euro for mussels, fries and a beer]. Each of these restaurants also has a man standing out front who will try very hard to convince you that his restaurant is the best.
For our last night in Belgium we decided to give the moules et frites a try. I honestly have no idea what I was thinking. I have a pretty serious problem with shellfish, and this certainly did not fix it. They brought us each and enormous bucket of mussels and a small bowl of fries with a miniscule beer. I have never had so much trouble eating a food in my life. I struggled through ten or fifteen of them, but the bucket was enormous, and it wasn’t getting any better as I got further into it. Laura, who normally does pretty well with mussels didn’t enjoy them much either. I am sure they were well prepared, but there is something very difficult about eating that many shellfish.
We each did our best pushing the mussels around and taking out all the empty shells in order to make it look like we had eaten a lot, and then in similar childish fashion went off to get ice cream for our second dinner.
2 comments:
did you acquire this serious problem with shellfish by driving a truck full of half-eaten, rotting oysters around Norfolk for a summer?
The moules were my second favorite part of Brussels, after the beer.
That said, they can be pretty gross if they are not fresh or not cooked well.
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