I’ve never enjoyed Brussels Bistro in Laguna Beach. The subterranean Belgium-themed restaurant that opened 15 years ago on Forest Avenue has always felt to me to be more of basement dive bar or nightclub than a serious restaurant.
Sure, the mussels were good. The pork shank, too. But the restaurant always had that moldy spilled beer smell that goes along with a dank basement dive bar. So in February when I heard Brussels Bistro had opened a new location on Avenida del Mar in San Clemente, I didn’t rush right over.
Maybe I should have. It’s everything the other one isn’t. It’s charming. It’s good-looking. It’s fresh and sparkly clean and filled with a crisp ocean breeze. Clearly, a professional interior designer got involved this time. And perhaps an architect, too.
The indoor/outdoor vibe is perfectly calibrated. A see-through weatherproof awning wraps tightly around the sidewalk patio after the sun goes down, locking in the warmth on even the coldest of nights.
The restaurant is packed. I haven’t seen a new restaurant generate this much excitement in San Clemente in years.
The menu appears more or less the same as the one in Laguna: more than three dozen Belgium beers, fresh oysters, steamed mussels, escargot and steak frites. It’s amazing how atmosphere can affect the taste of food.
The escargot are baked in their shells with herbed butter until they are as tender as marshmallows. They give you one of those awkward devices meant to help you hold the shells while you attempt to dig out the snails, that same the device that Julia Roberts’ character struggled with in Pretty Woman when she accidentally flung a snail across the dining room.
The snails are very good, but it appears that most people are here for the mussels. The kitchen offers eight different variations, ranging from classic beer and cream to green curry and coconut. The mussels are excellent. Servers rush back and forth nonstop, delivering steaming pots of mussels in one direction, returning piles of empty shells in the other direction, barely keeping pace with customers’ orders.
If you venture beyond mussels, Brussels serves a good little steak. Although it doesn’t compare with a great USDA Prime ribeye, it is oddly satisfying in a Belgium-themed bistro like this and priced at $25. I’m not entirely certain what muscle it’s cut from. The menu simply calls it “steak.” It might be a hanger steak, or perhaps some sort of sirloin. “It’s from somewhere on the back,” my waiter says, reaching his hand behind his back to show me where that might be. “It’s small but thick,” he says.
The beer selection is extensive and almost exclusively Belgian. Don’t overlook the wine list, though. It’s short but riddled with gems, like a very nice half bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
This new San Clemente offshoot feels worlds apart from the Laguna Beach original. It looks like maybe the owners had been hoarding 15 years of profits to finally open the restaurant they’ve really always wanted.
Brussels Bistro
Where: 218 Avenida Del Mar, San Clemente
When: Lunch and dinner daily, plus Sunday brunch
Phone: 949-218-8489
Online: brusselsbistro.com
