Going Dutch in the Philippines

Check out Philippine slide show
(I'm too lazy to read)

Video: "Eating Mussels the Belgian Way"

I must have been so enamored of the sights, museums, peeing statues or comic strip murals, but my newly-found liking for Belgian beer was the main culprit in my inexcusable gastronomic oversight. The main focus was on trying a different Belgian beer at each meal, thus after an eternity - four whole days - in Belgium I still hadn't even partaken of their national dish - a pot of steaming mussels, marinated in the sauce of your choice. So, at dinnertime I casually mentioned it to Luc.

"Mussels? You want mussels?", he sounded incredulous.
"Of course I want mussels! I'm in Belgium, am I not?", said I.
"Now?!", Luc wanted to know.

Sensing my eagerness, he pondered this matter for a few minutes, then finally weighed in. "Well, we could go to any of the restaurants around here", waving his hand to indicate the establishments circling the market square in Ghent. "All of them are good, but if you can hold on for one more day I will take you to the best place for mussels in all of Belgium."

The best mussels in Belgium? Who could resist such an offer? Later, Luc elaborated a bit more on his plan, but did not give away most of the details. He only instructed me to wait at the hostel the following morning, and he'd drop by in his car since the place was roughly an hour away. At the sound of the word "car", my ears perked up. Roadtrip!!

It was a gorgeous late summer day. Luc showed up at the appointed hour in his open-top Mercedes, and minutes later we were on the highway. To where? "We're going to cross the border into the Netherlands and visit a small town known for their mussels".

Whoa?! I could scarcely believe his words. After days of extolling the virtues of Belgian cuisine and beer, lambasting Dutch food as "inedible", and joking (or maybe he wasn't) that "we use Heineken to wash dishes", now we're going to Dutch country to wolf down the national dish of Belgium? Excuse me, but my mathematical brain is screaming "This does not compute!".

"It's quite simple, really", Luc admitted, somewhat sheepishly, "Most of the mussels consumed in Belgium are actually grown in the Netherlands". So there. One of life's great ironies. He added, "And this part of Netherlands used to be part of Belgium, and even up to now they identify more closely with us". We quickly drove through the Belgian countryside into arch-rival territory (customs control paid no heed), turned off the main highway into a narrow two-lane road, and soon Luc was giving me a lesson on license plate design. "See that car in front of us? The red and white plate? That's registered in Belgium. I bet he's going to the same place as we are". Considering that the area consisted solely of corn fields and small towns of the "don't blink or you'll miss it" variety, that seemed like a safe bet.

Yet another surprise was in store for me. As we neared Musseltown, I strained my eyes to read the welcome sign and burst out laughing. "Welcome to Philippine". So, this was where everyone flocked for jumbo mussels - a tiny town named after Spain's King Philip II (factoid of the day: the Spanish ruled the Netherlands in the 1500s) consisting of eight restaurants specializing in mussels served in huge pots.

Our restaurant, smack right in front of the town's giant Mussel monument (picture somewhere in the slide show), served them "all-you-can-eat" style for about EUR 26. Salivating at the thought of going hog wild and with the drive making us hungry, Luc and I worked on the initial pot with great enthusiasm. Amused at my efforts to separate the mussels from their shells, he did take time out to demonstrate the "Belgian way" of eating mussels, elegant in its efficiency.

Much to our dismay, even our combined efforts were not enough to finish this one (and we tried to ignore the Belgian fries). I attributed our failure to the fact that the mussels were incredibly huge, "jumbo" seemed quite the understatement. Our waitress remarked sympathetically, "Yes, it is quite a lot of food - about 3.5 kilos", which caused my jaw to drop (and my head to spin from all that uric acid), before scurrying off to attend to the two busloads of senior citizen day trippers from Wallonia. I couldn't help but smile at the thought of Philippine as an unlikely foodie destination. The Dutch might have their culinary failings, but Belgian food here is first-rate.



P.S. This is the last post from the Belgium chronicles. Thanks for reading! If you've missed the previous posts or wish to be entertained by my fine writing yet again, here are all the Belgium posts. I'm off to plan the next adventure.