Rouge Piment Vietnamese restaurant - Brussels

Rouge Piment serves vietnamese and thai cuisine. Located close to the Brussels Bourse, an area with a number of Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, Rouge Piment has been open for less than a year. We visited the restaurant using a discounted coupon good for a 4 course menu.

The interior was fairly new looking and quite nice actually.

Our 4 course menu began with a pineapple aperitif

Soups

Potage aux raviolis Wantan

Potage de scampis à la citronnelle

Starters

Batonnets de canne à sucre aux langoustines

 
Calamars grillés piquants

Mains

Scampis sautés aux légumes

Canard au basilic et piments

Dessert

Beignets d'ananas

Beignets de banane

From our previous experiences with discounted coupons, we were expecting below par food quality and service and smaller portions. Rouge Piment was such a pleasant surprise. The four course menu we had was actually the same offered in their printed menu, and we were offered 3 options for each course. From the aperitif to the dessert, everything was beautifully presented. One improvement we'd suggest, however, would be to cut down on their use of fish sauce, which left a strong glutamate aftertaste.

This restaurant was a nice discovery and we'll happily be back.

Rouge Piment
Restaurant vietnamien - thai
Rue Auguste Orts 6, Bruxelles 1000
http://rouge-piment.weebly.com/index.html

Blue Elephant Brussels - Thai buffet brunch

After our Thai brunch a few months back at Les Larmes du Tigre, we decided to try the brunch at Blue Elephant Brussels. These two restaurants are the only ones in Brussels offering Thai Sunday buffet lunches (as of November 2012 - newcomers welcome!).

Blue Elephant Brussels was opened in 1980 by Karl, a Belgian, and his Thai wife, Khun. Today it has expanded into a global group with more than a dozen locations, including Bangkok and Phuket that also have cooking schools attached. They even ventured into Indian restaurants - La Porte des Indes - in London and on Avenue Louise, which according to reviews do not offer the most authentic Indian cuisine... They also manufacture and distribute grocery products, sold among others in some GB supermarkets in Brussels at fairly high prices.

Blue Elephant is located on Chaussée de Waterloo in Uccle. The restaurtant is quite inconspicuous and can easily be missed when driving by.

The interior is decorated in a traditional Siam style, complete with wooden panels, plants and flowers.

The restaurant seats 100 persons over 2 floors. The seats were rather uncomfortable with the cushions in need of some new covers. The biggest problem, however, was that they had tried to cram way too many chairs and tables, such that one of us had to stand up several times to let a lady walk out of her chair.

I had a look at the 2nd floor. Try to avoid being seated here for the brunch, since one has to climb the dark narrow stairs several times with food plates from the buffet downstairs.

Let's look at the buffet, with a selection of appetizers, including prawns grilled at the table.

Lots of choices at the salad bar, with some beautifully carved fruits as decoration.

The main dishes: rice plus 5 curries, and a noodle dish. All were fine, especially the hot curry with chunks of red chillies. The watery Chicken red curry, however, was a notch below that of Les Larmes du Tigre, which uses better quality and fresher ingredients. Since they did not have any vegetarian mains in the buffet, a waiter offered to order a veggie stir-fry from the kitchen for any vegetarians.

The noodle bar:

For dessert, there was an extensive choice of fresh fruits...

Notice the macarons and tiramisu at the end - very Thai indeed!:)

In the drinks menu we spotted the young coconut, which we had to order. Refreshing, although it didn't taste very fresh.

Finally, as we were leaving, we saw various grocery ingredients for sale.

So what's our verdict ? In terms of food, Blue Elephant offers a much better Sunday buffet brunch both quantity and quality wise, albeit at a 25% higher price. Les Larmes du Tigre, on the other hand, had a more classy setting with enough space between the tables, and the waiting staff were friendlier and more efficient.

Blue Elephant Thai Restaurant
Uccle, Brussels
www.blueelephant.com/brussels

Les Larmes du Tigre Bruxelles - Thai buffet brunch

Les Larmes du Tigre is a Thai restaurant located in a quiet area behind the Brussels Palais de Justice, about five minutes walk from Louise metro station. Along with the Blue Elephant, it is considered to be one of the best places for Thai cuisine in Brussels. We decided to try their Sunday Thai buffet brunch today.

View from the street

The entrance

One of the two dining areas

The ceiling, covered with Asian umbrellas that add a touch of exoticism

There's a garden terrace for the sunny days

Some crackers were offered on the table, to nibble on while ordering drinks.

Now onto the food: Thai Buffet by Les Larmes du Tigre

The buffet is served in a small area, with starters on the left, main dishes in the center and desserts on the right. On the other side there were two cooks preparing noodles and pancakes.

Starters - the chicken satay skewers and their peanut sauce were delicious. They also has vegetable salads, fried calamari, samosas, several friend meat snacks, steamed dumplings, spicy beef salad, noodle salad.

 

 

 The charrette (cart) of Thai noodles soup. It's more for the show than for the taste...

Main dishes - noodles, white rice, fried rice, beef stew, sweet & sour chicken, Thai red curry and shrimps sauté. The red curry was delicious. Not sure what the Chinese sweet & sour chicken was doing in this Thai buffet...

The cook preparing the sweet dessert pancakes

We recalled from our visit to Thailand that desserts are not a highlight of Thai cuisine and our attempts at ordering dessert ended up with starchy/greasy dishes being served (sweet rice, fried ice cream...). Thai people seemed to prefer fresh fruits for their sweet tooth. So our expectations were not so high for dessert.

These were the dessert choices. There were also two types of ice cream (pineapple and melon) not visible in the picture. Too bad the mangos were not ripe.

By 13:00, the place started to get crowded...

and there were small queues for the buffet. So it is advisable to reach the restaurant before 12:30.

Overall, we had an enjoyable lunch with some quality Thai food. It should be noted that vegetarian options were quite limited. From the welcome to the moment we left, the service was nice and with a smile. We look forward to our next visit at Les Larmes du Tigre, most probably for an à la carte meal and skipping dessert.

UPDATE: we reviewed Blue Elephant's brunch a few months later.

Les Larmes du Tigre

Brussels, Avenue Louise

http://www.leslarmesdutigre.be/