We’re in Australian on the Gold Coast. In the Belgium Beer Café (cnr Gold Coast Highway and Fern Avenue, Surfers Paradise Qld 4217) listening to Italian-American Crooner Tony Bennett while a middle aged Asian man in a short sleeved check shirt and a mike mimes to the music, serenading the tables.
We aren’t the only ones to be amused.
This café is housed in the Pink Poodle, next to Q1, the world’s tallest residential tower. The Pink Poodle itself was until recently redeveloped in multistorey units a two story 1950s style motel.
The Poodle’s transformation and the Belgium café are a metaphor for change on the coast. A few years ago troll-like creatures walked the streets with cases of XXXX Gold on their shoulders – that’s a mid strength over fizzed piss weak drink that Queenslanders know as beer.
Tonight as we walk guys (some still trolls) pass us with cases on Heineken on their shoulders. Some even quaff poncy Belgium brews.
The Belgium Beer Café has some of the local beer staples on its drinks menu but they are inconsequential. This is about the three dozen Belgium beers – about 30 bottles and six on tap. Many come with specially shaped and branded glasses.
On tap, Grimbergen beer comes either dark or light in large baloon glasses. Hoegaarden with its fresh flavour of cardamom and orange peel is straight up and down.
This place is serving the kind of beer that wins awards. Belgium food, however, never has.
That’s not to say this joint serves bad food. It is good and wholesome and simple. The menu features cheese and prawn croquets, steak hache (burger) and chips and a load of similar stuff.
Ignore these and go for the mussels with a suitable vessel filled with Belgium beer. A kilo of small, delicate and sweet mussels comes with chips and mayo for $24.50. Jackie’s mussels were cooked in wine and herbs; mine in hoegaarden.
The food is cooked and served in black enamel pans, the lids reserved for the used shells.
Both were exactly what they should be with the usual bonus of flavoured broth at the bottom of the pan. The only mistake we made is that we could have probably shared one between us. Oh, and I ruined my appetite by drinking too much beer.
