"Belgium's first vegan Michelin star — Nicolas Decloedt cooks plants with the obsession others reserve for foie gras. A table on Rue de Vergnies that says more about who you are than any steak could."
Belgium's Plant-Based Pioneer
Nicolas Decloedt has been cooking vegetables seriously since 2008 — before plant-based fine dining was a category, before Michelin had a Green Star to award it. Humus x hortense arrived at its Michelin Red Star in 2023 not by following a trend but by creating one. Gault & Millau named Decloedt Best Vegetable Chef of the Year years before the industry caught up with what he was doing on Rue de Vergnies in Ixelles.
The philosophy is soil-to-plate — one step further than farm-to-table and significantly more demanding. Decloedt works closely with botanist-farmer Dries Delanote and a network of artisans who understand what regenerative agriculture means in practice. The micro-seasons are not a marketing phrase here — they are the actual structure of the menu, which changes as the soil changes, not as the calendar does. This is cooking with its own internal logic, independent of fashion.
Sommelier Caroline Baerten manages the liquid programme with the same rigour. The beverage pairings at humus x hortense are not wine pairings in the conventional sense — they are fermented, infused, and botanical preparations designed to work alongside Decloedt's cooking at a level of pairing intensity that most wine lists cannot achieve. Budget €90–140 per person for the full experience.
Best Occasion: First Date
A first date at humus x hortense is a signal. It says you know Brussels beyond the obvious addresses — that you understand the city has more than one dimension of excellence. It also provides the best possible dinner conversation: the menu itself is a series of prompts about how food is grown, what flavour without meat tastes like, how a kitchen can be a form of argument. You will not run out of things to say.
For impressing clients, the restaurant's double Michelin recognition — a Red Star and a Green Star — carries weight with anyone who pays attention to food. The address is genuinely difficult to know unless you know Brussels, which is precisely the point. For solo dining, the counter positions you directly in front of Decloedt's process — the experience rewards exactly the kind of focused attention a solo diner brings.
What to Expect
The tasting menu changes with the season's micro-moments — there is no fixed menu to research in advance. Arriving without expectations is not a disadvantage here; it is the correct approach. Decloedt's preparations involve fermentation, dehydration, and techniques that extract flavour from plant matter at intensities that surprise even those who have eaten seriously across Europe.
The Ixelles setting is intimate and considered — not minimal in the cold sense but stripped of distraction in a way that directs attention to the plate. The room has a quality of concentration to it, like an atelier rather than a dining room. Alongside Kamo and Senzanome, this is one of Brussels' rooms where eating alone or eating with someone new both feel equally intentional.