Have you ever wanted to try a restaurant with a Michelin star? This is a place where a seven course dinner is cheaper than five beers in Norway.
The last time Tora and I visited a restaurant awarded a Michelin star it was all the way up in the Eiffel Tower. It’s safe to say that the expectations of a “budget” restaurant at street level is not the same, but regardless of the price, a Michelin star restaurant better make quite an impression.
This time I’m travelling to Le Competir de Marie, a small restaurant with a seating capacity of just 12 people, located in Mons in Belgium. The restaurant is as anonymous as it gets. Who would expect this to be one of the finest restaurants there is?
On the inside it looks very different. Everything is new and all the seats have a view of the kitchen to watch you food getting prepared.
The price you have to pay is €45 for the entire dinner. Not exactly a McDonald’s price, but for this price you get a very special experience and seven courses. Yes, seven! Five starters, one main course and one dessert. It is also possible to buy single dishes from the menu, but you get a much better value and experience by purchasing the full set.
First serving contained three small courses. The next one contained two more. “There, that’s the starters” I thought. Then the third serving arrived, still containing starters. It turned out that each serving (being surprisingly large) were just one starter each. After 5 small starters I was only through the first two “full” starters.
After the fourth course I was getting full, but the rest had to be experienced. The last starter arrived, but was followed by a sixth one. At this point I had to ask the chef how much more food was on the way. The next course was the main one I was told.
The main course and the dessert arrived, now increasing the number of courses to eight! After this I also got some smaller cakes, a caramel thing and some cheese. In total the amount of food, but more importantly the quality of the food, was simply amazing for a mere €45.
I am certainly no foodie and would probably summarise the food as: “It tasted yummy”.
A bit more should be said, even for someone as gastronomically blind as me. The biggest surprise is how much taste there is in every single bite. This is probably why each portion (usually) is so small, you don’t need a lot of food to get an abundance of taste (and in this case you get plenty of both taste and food).
If you add wine to the dinner it costs another €30, but water also worked well. Regardless, the price is good for the wine as well, again costing less than just a couple of beers in Norway…
If you are curious to try out a Michelin star restaurant for the first time this is a great and cheap place to start. Travelling all the way to Belgium to «save» money might not be such a saving after all, but combine it with some of the other sights nearby and it will make a nice budget trip. Nearby Mons you can experience both the world’s second largest boat lift and 6400 year old mines, where you can explore like a true archeologist.
