I went for an early birthday lunch and enjoyed the DC Restaurant Week special menu. I had the pumpkin soup, the salad with chicken, candied nuts, fruit, red onions, and balsamic , and shared desserts_ bread pudding and sweet Belgian waffle with red pears. Everything was divine. Our service was excellent. It was bright and cozy inside.

This is a great bar and restaurant. It has a fantastic beer selection, consisting of draft and bottled beers from Belgium, Germany and right here at home. It’s probably about ten pages long. There are plenty of red ales and sour beers, which are my favorites. The only place in DC I know with a comparable list is Pizzeria Paradiso, and I think this list is better. The food here is overall pretty simple and inexpensive Belgian pub fare, but very well done, and in some cases it well exceeds the “pub fare” label. There are traditional dishes like mussels, and pommes frites with a variety of mayonnaises, but there are also more unusual ones as well. I haven’t found anything I don’t like yet. My favorite is a simple plate of tomato soup and cheese waffel. I could probably eat this every day! The vegetable dishes are always good - well-executed and interesting. I usually don’t have room for dessert, but they’re more sophisticated than you might expect, and they’re very good also. I recommend the chocolate ice cream sundae, where the chocolate is melted onto the sundae at your table. Overall, I think the food here is as good as or better than Le Diplomate right up the street, where you can hardly ever even get a table! Here, you can typically walk right in with no reservations, although you may have to settle for bar seating, which is a little tight but actually quite nice. If you go to the men’s room, check out the humorous sausage reference.