"Opposite the Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle where Bruegel is buried. A serious room with serious Belgian cooking — offal, game, seasonal produce — for teams that don't need their dinner to be a spectacle."
The Art Nouveau Post Office of the Marolles
The Marolles is the neighbourhood Brussels built before it started worrying about what visitors thought. Its streets — the Rue Haute, the Rue Blaes, the Place du Jeu de Balle with its daily flea market — have the authentic dishevelment of a place that developed organically rather than by design. Les Brigittines occupies a former Art Nouveau post office on Place de la Chapelle, directly opposite the Church of Notre-Dame de la Chapelle, where Pieter Bruegel the Elder is buried. The neighbourhood context is not incidental. It is the point.
Chef Dirk Myny — a Brussels native who has spent his career making the argument that Belgian cooking deserves the same serious attention given to French — curates a menu of extraordinary specificity. The offal dishes are not there to shock; they are there because the Belgian culinary tradition that this kitchen is defending includes offal as a matter of principle, prepared with the care that principle demands. Game in season. Vol-au-vent with morel mushrooms, prepared with flaky pastry that requires patience to achieve correctly. Veal cheeks braised in Cantillon lambic beer — a genuinely Bruxellois ingredient that produces a depth of flavour unavailable anywhere else.
The Michelin Guide has recognised Les Brigittines for "good cooking" and Tripadvisor named it a Travellers' Choice for 2025 — recognitions that reflect the restaurant's consistent delivery of a style of cooking that fewer kitchens in Brussels now attempt. Restaurant Guru rates it 4.4 out of 5 based on 1,594 reviews, which for this type of cooking and this neighbourhood is remarkable. The room is rustic but elegant: warm, inviting, with decor that reflects the Marolles aesthetic without condescending to it.
Best Occasion: Team Dinner
The best team dinner is not always the most comfortable one. Sometimes it is the dinner that takes the team somewhere it would not otherwise go — a neighbourhood it does not know, a kitchen it has not tried, a culinary tradition it has underestimated. Les Brigittines does that work. Bringing a team to the Marolles, to a former post office, to a room where Cantillon beer appears in the cooking and offal features on the menu, is a choice that requires confidence and rewards it. The people who come here tend to be converted by the end of the first course.
For a birthday dinner, the room's generous portions and the kitchen's commitment to the kind of cooking that makes people feel properly fed — not just technically nourished — creates the warmth that a celebration requires. For impressing a discerning client, Les Brigittines signals familiarity with Brussels' authentic dining culture in a way that hotel restaurants and tourist-facing brasseries cannot. Book for groups of up to fourteen; the room accommodates larger parties with notice.
What to Order
The vol-au-vent with morel mushrooms is the dish to start with if you want to understand what this kitchen is arguing. It is a preparation that has been reduced to a formula in lesser restaurants; here it is made with puff pastry that has the right lamination and a sauce that has been reduced to the correct concentration. The veal cheeks with Cantillon beer — a lambic brewed in Brussels since 1900 with wild fermentation that produces complexity unavailable from any other source — are the main course that justifies the journey to the Marolles on its own.
The offal dishes — brains, kidneys, sweetbreads — rotate with the season and the market and are each prepared with the attention they require. The Belgian beer selection is chosen with expertise; the kitchen's use of Cantillon extends naturally to the cellar's offerings. The wine list is competent and fairly priced. Budget €65–85 per person with drinks. The service is warm and knowledgeable — the staff can explain every dish in detail and are happy to do so, which itself signals that the kitchen is proud of what it sends out.