BRUSSELS, Dec 15 — Brussels has one of the largest tram networks in the world, but there’s one tram ride in the city where it’s not the journey, nor the destination that pleases — it’s the food.
To paraphrase the Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, “This is not a Tram.”
Indeed, this is not a restaurant, either — this is the Tram Experience, one of the hottest gourmet dining tickets in town.
A dining adventure
“Eating out is the national sport in Belgium,” writes Bill Bryson in his book “Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe.” This small European country, about the size of Maryland, has 127 Michelin-starred restaurants, with 24 in Brussels, compared with 20 in Berlin and 14 in Milan.
But increasingly, the residents of this cosmopolitan city are eager to try fine dining in novelty venues, especially restaurants with a view.
The Tram Experience serves up a two-hour gourmet meal, during which guests can take in the scenery as they ride through Europe’s de facto capital in a souped-up tram from the 1960s, fitted with four ovens and two induction plates. Another popular haute-view experience is Dinner in the Sky, where starred chefs, cooking facilities, guests, food and table are suspended by a giant crane high above Brussels’ Arc de Triomphe.
The concept of the Tram Experience’s quirky, moveable feast is simple: Serve up some of the world’s finest restaurant meals, created by chefs from around the globe, on board one of the city’s most humble and historic people-movers.
World-class cuisine
This year’s theme is “Lady Chefs,” and the night I went, the Japanese and Swedish-inspired menu — including a starter of scallop sashimi and a main course of venison and lingonberry — was from Sweden’s Frida Ronge, head chef at Restaurant vRÅ in Gothenburg.
The Tram Experience is the brainchild of Olivier Marette, project manager for gastronomy at Visit Brussels, the city’s tourism agency. Online booking opened in early 2012, with no advertising, and in three days, around 6,000 tickets were sold, forcing the computer booking system to crash.
Two hours of bliss
Customer satisfaction is extremely high, with 97 per cent of customers who gave online feedback saying they would recommend the experience to others. One woman wrote, “My husband is a tram driver in Antwerp, and it was to celebrate his birthday. He enjoyed the experience very much and was very happy to chat with the tram driver…!”
As for minor complaints, some people thought the two-hour journey was too short, so eventually the Friday itinerary was changed to a seven-course meal lasting nearly three hours.
But no matter what the night or the occasion, “the star of the journey is always the food,” said Mr. Marette.
The comfort of good food
My husband and I, and our good friends Chris and Karen, booked tickets weeks in advance and were looking forward to this playful, almost childlike culinary adventure. On the night, however, our mood was dampened by global, and very real, adult fears: Terrorists had attacked Paris the night before, at venues that included restaurants and bars.
Parisians eventually found some solace by flocking to buy copies of “A Movable Feast,” Earnest Hemingway’s affectionate portrait of the city, including its bars and cafes.
“We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other,” he wrote in the book, published posthumously in 1964.
The following weekend, Brussels itself was in lockdown, and the Parisians’ rather eccentric cousins, just north of Paris, were tweeting cat photos — one cat was drinking Belgian beer, another was dressed up as a burrito, for example — in support of an official police force request not to share police movements in Brussels on social media.
The police responded to the levity by tweeting a photo of a bowl of cat food: “For the cats who helped us last night... help yourself!” — Reuters
