Photo of
July 22, 2015
Wim and Joris extolling the many virtues of Belgian beer and food.
Wim and Joris extolling the many virtues of Belgian beer and food.

The Merchant City Festival gets underway in Glasgow this Saturday and runs until Sunday 2nd August.

As always, there are all sorts of larks to be had from dancing diggers to guided walking tours of the Merchant City’s music scene.

Tipple in Tontine

For those of who us that can’t really appreciate culture unless we have first taken care of culinary matters, it is worth swinging by Tontine Lane over the course of the festival.

Home to Douglas Gordon’s Turner prize-winning Empire sign, the lane is usually shut to the public.

For the duration of the festival, it has been opened up and turned into a hub for live music, Belgian street art and projections plus DJ sets.

At the heart of the event is the Heverlee Pop-Up – a Belgian beer café which has sprung into life on the site.

The Belgian beer Heverlee is the driving force behind the pop-up and four different varieties of the brand are on tap at the bar along with a selection of interesting and hard to find bottled beers from other Belgian breweries.

We wrote about Heverlee last year.

As well as fine  brews, the pop-up is serving Belgian specialities such as lobster mac ‘n’ cheese, Fish Plaice fish ‘n’ chips and, of course, moules frites.

Slightly fuzzy pic is a sign of wonky camera. Not too much Heverlee.
Slightly fuzzy pic is a sign of wonky camera. Not too much Heverlee.

Heverlee Witte

Last night, the 5pm Dining blog dropped in to help Joris Brams, brewer of Heverlee, celebrate Belgium’s National Day along with Visit Flanders.

Joris, a man who is incredibly and infectiously enthusiastic about Belgian beers, had got together with  Wim Dejonghe, the chef at Het land aan de overkant, a restaurant in Leuven where Heverlee is brewed.

Between them they had developed a six course menu paired with Belgian beers. It was an eye-popping, taste-bud-bopping experience.

Radish snow, hazelnut and lemon crumble, dock leaf oil and stock made from roasted potato peel were all new to me.

I’m not going to list every dish and how well they paired with the beers but if you get the chance to eat at Wim’s restaurant then take it.

A highlight of the evening for me was a deconstructed dish of moules frites. Mussels were accompanied by charred leek, lavas oil, pickled onion, mussel sauce emulsion and the aforementioned roasted potato peel stock.

Moule frites but not as we know them.
Moule frites but not as we know them.

It was paired with Heverlee Witte, Joris’s seasonal summer beer. The earthy stock, smoky leek and slightly sweet mussels were a fantastic match for the slightly sweet, aromatic beer.

The radish snow and so on were a one off but the Heverlee Pop-Up is open to the public from now until the end of the Festival.

It’s fun. We recommend the new Heverlee Bruin, although at 6.8% you may want to stick with a half.