Restaurant in Saint-Gilles, Belgium
Seasonal kitchen, easy booking, real value.
La Buvette is a Michelin Plate-recognised modern cuisine restaurant in Saint-Gilles, Brussels, with consistent Opinionated About Dining rankings and a kitchen that takes seasonal, plant-influenced cooking seriously. At the €€€ tier, it is one of the most credentialled and accessible bookings in the neighbourhood, with easy availability and a 4.6 Google rating from over 500 reviews.
La Buvette is not primarily a vegetarian restaurant — that misconception costs it bookings it deserves. Chef Nicolas Scheidt runs a modern cuisine kitchen on the Chaussée d'Alsemberg in Saint-Gilles that happens to take plant-based cooking seriously enough to earn a permanent spot in the We're Smart Green Guide. If you are coming for a special occasion dinner in Brussels and want something with genuine culinary credentials at the €€€ tier, this is worth booking. If you want Korean contemporary or casual Vietnamese, look elsewhere on the same street.
The room on Chaussée d'Alsemberg is the first thing that orients you. Saint-Gilles has a distinct residential character — art nouveau façades, neighbourhood cafés, a pace that Brussels proper does not have , and La Buvette reads as part of that fabric rather than apart from it. Visually, this is not a stark tasting-menu dining room with white tablecloths and reverent silence. It is a space that fits an evening that matters without requiring you to perform formality.
That visual register matters for how you should book it. For a date or a celebration dinner, the atmosphere works well precisely because it is not performing luxury. The Michelin Plate recognition (held in both 2024 and 2025) signals that the kitchen is operating at a level worth taking seriously, while the 4.6 from 568 Google reviews tells you that the broader dining public agrees. For a special occasion at the €€€ price point in Saint-Gilles, those two data points together give you a reasonable level of confidence before you sit down.
Scheidt is also the chef behind Café des Spores, which gives him a clear creative identity around seasonal, often fungal-forward, and plant-influenced cooking. At La Buvette, he works alongside Diamantis Kalogerinis, whose orientation is explicitly seasonal. What that means in practical terms: the menu will shift with what is available, which is a genuine argument for a return visit but also means you cannot research a specific dish before you arrive. Go with an openness to what is on that week rather than a fixed expectation.
The editorial angle here is relevant to your decision. A kitchen this oriented toward seasonal produce and plant-based creativity tends to attract wine lists that match that philosophy , lower-intervention producers, bottles selected for texture and compatibility with vegetable-driven plates rather than for prestige labels. That is the context you should bring to La Buvette's wine program. Without a published list to quote directly, the honest advice is to ask the room what they are pouring alongside the menu that evening. A kitchen with this profile in this neighbourhood is not going to hand you a purely conventional French-and-Italian list. If natural wine or regional Belgian producers matter to you as part of a special occasion, La Buvette is a more logical fit than Colonel Louise or Dolce Amaro, both of which operate at the same price tier but with different food-and-wine philosophies.
The Opinionated About Dining rankings add useful context here. La Buvette has appeared consistently across multiple OAD categories , Casual Europe ranked #802 in 2025, Gourmet Casual ranked #189 in 2023 , which tells you this is a kitchen that critics and food-focused diners track. OAD tends to reward restaurants where the wine program and the food are genuinely integrated rather than treated as separate departments. That is relevant if you are planning a longer, more exploratory dinner rather than a quick meal.
Booking at La Buvette is rated Easy, which means you are not fighting a two-month waitlist. For a Thursday or Friday evening, booking a week to ten days ahead is sensible; weekend slots, particularly Saturday dinner, will fill faster given the neighbourhood's dining density. The address is Chaussée d'Alsemberg 108 in Saint-Gilles, accessible by tram from central Brussels. For the leading version of the experience , particularly if wine is part of your evening , aim for a mid-week dinner when the room is less pressured and you can take your time. Lunch is a different proposition at this price tier; if you want the full picture, dinner is the right session.
For context on the broader neighbourhood, see our full Saint-Gilles restaurants guide, and if you are building a longer Brussels trip, our Saint-Gilles hotels guide and our Saint-Gilles bars guide are useful companions.
Belgium's serious modern cuisine restaurants tend to cluster at higher price points and in more formal settings. Hof van Cleve in Kruishoutem, Boury in Roeselare, and Zilte in Antwerp are all operating at Michelin star level with corresponding prices and booking difficulty. La Buvette occupies a more accessible position: Michelin-recognised, OAD-tracked, but without the star-driven demand that makes those restaurants hard to get into. If you want serious modern cooking in Belgium without the full formal-restaurant commitment, La Buvette is a more practical entry point. For an international comparison, the positioning is closer to a Maison Lameloise-tier experience in terms of chef ambition and produce focus, but without the destination-restaurant overhead. Bozar Restaurant in Brussels proper is the nearest comparable in the city if you want to weigh options before committing.
See the comparison section below for how La Buvette stacks up against its immediate neighbourhood peers.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Booking Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| La Buvette | Modern Cuisine | €€€ | Easy |
| Nénu | Vietnamese Contemporary | €€ | Unknown |
| La Charcuterie | Sharing | €€ | Unknown |
| ANJU | Korean Contemporary | €€ | Unknown |
| Colonel Louise | Meats and Grills | €€€ | Unknown |
| Dolce Amaro | Italian | €€€ | Unknown |
What to weigh when choosing between La Buvette and alternatives.
Yes. Booking is rated Easy at La Buvette, which means a solo reservation on short notice is realistic — you are not competing with large parties for scarce tables. The Chaussée d'Alsemberg address is a residential neighbourhood setting, which suits solo dining better than a high-traffic tourist corridor. At €€€, solo diners get full access to what the kitchen does without needing to coordinate a group.
Better than most at this price point. La Buvette's permanent inclusion in the We're Smart Green Guide reflects a kitchen that takes plant-based eating seriously as a culinary position, not just an accommodation. Chef Diamantis Kalogerinis works the seasonal produce angle hard. If plant-based or vegetable-forward is your requirement, this is one of the stronger choices in Brussels at €€€.
Within Saint-Gilles, Nénu, La Charcuterie, ANJU, Colonel Louise, and Dolce Amaro cover different formats and price points. La Buvette is the most decorated of the local set — Michelin Plate and multiple OAD rankings — so if credentials and seasonal modern cuisine are your criteria, it sits above the immediate neighbourhood competition. The others are worth considering if you want something more casual or lower-spend.
A week to ten days is enough for a Thursday or Friday evening — booking difficulty is rated Easy. This is a meaningful differentiator versus Brussels restaurants at comparable award levels where two-to-four week lead times are common. Weekend slots may move faster, so booking ten days out for Saturday is the safer call.
If seasonal, produce-driven cooking is the format you want, yes. The kitchen's OAD Casual rankings across multiple years — including #802 in Europe and Highly Recommended in North America — indicate consistent execution rather than a one-season peak. At €€€, you are paying for a credentialed kitchen in a neighbourhood setting without the ceremony overhead of Brussels's more formal tasting-menu rooms.
It works for a special occasion if you want a low-key, food-focused evening rather than a formal event. The Saint-Gilles setting is residential and the booking difficulty is Easy, so it does not carry the occasion-marking weight of a harder-to-get table. For a dinner where the cooking is the centrepiece and the room is relaxed, it is a solid call. For high ceremony, look at Brussels's Michelin-starred options instead.
At €€€ with a Michelin Plate, OAD Casual Europe ranking, and We're Smart Green Guide recognition, La Buvette is priced in line with its credentials rather than above them. The easy booking availability at this award level is the real value argument — you get a kitchen with multiple years of editorial recognition without paying a scarcity premium. If you want more formal or higher-starred, Hof van Cleve or Boury are the step up, but at a significant price and booking-difficulty increase.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
