Restaurant review: Nightshop
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Rue de Flandre 167
What’s good: Drinks, drinks, drinks! Follow the staff’s recommendations and pair your food with a blended beer from Swiss brewery À tue-tête. If beer isn’t your thing, no worries; Nightshop is also a natural wine bar in between dining services, and it offers a vast selection.
For the starter, we recommend the crispy artichoke and aioli, which features a couple of carefully cooked artichokes with immaculate texture, paired with a light but flavorful and oily aioli sauce. For veggies, the coffee-roasted carrots, ricotta and pangrattato is an incredible choice. The balance of flavor between the rich coffee taste and the tinge of sweetness from the seared carrots makes the simple but creative dish incredible.
For carnivores, the menu’s star — Champagne sausage in bean purée — is even more delicious than it sounds. The sausage is perfectly cooked, juicy and packed with flavor. The creamy bean purée complements the sausage perfectly. It also comes with an artichoke to soak up the rest of the purée, which is a great touch.
What’s not: Because Nightshop is as much a bar as a culinary destination, it’s possible the dishes ordered may come out at uneven times. If you’re looking to eat a main course at the same time as your dining pal, ask the kitchen to send the food at the same time.
Vibe: Nightshop offers a gorgeous balance of industrial and refined without trying too hard, comprising gothic candle holders, classic checkered floors and an open kitchen. Less business lunch, more date.
Insider tip: If you’re dining with a small group, get here at the start of dinner or lunch service, as the restaurant doesn’t take reservations for parties of fewer than four.
Who’s picking the check: It’s a fairly standard night out in Brussels. For an appetizer, entrée and a drink brace to spend around €35-€40 per person.
Fun fact: Jocasta Allwood, the owner of Nightshop, is a graphic artist trying her hand at the culinary scene. She left London to open the Brussels operation.
How to get there: Take the metro to Sainte Catherine in the city center and it’s a short walk through the cobbled streets to Nightshop.
— Review published on May 11, 2023. Illustration by Dato Parulava for POLITICO.
