It’s Friday! That means the end of the work week is near. Oh, sweet weekend, how I’ve missed you! But Friday also means I’m often alone at the office. That’s okay, it gives me the opportunity to get some tasks done like typing out reports. But it also means I’m totally free in my lunch choice! (well of course I can’t take the metro to the other side of the city, but I can pick from some of the various lunch places in the vicinity.) Our regular sandwich bar around the corner has very good sandwiches, but their salads are a bit overpriced compared to what you get. Besides that, I try to find lunch places that use bio ingredients. So, a few Fridays ago, I found the BioLounge! Time for a little review (no photos available, sorry).
My absolute new favorite lunch option is their salad bar. At the BioLounge, you can choose between two types of cardboard boxes: one of 5,50 euros (definitely large enough for me) and one of 6,50 euros (a bigger one, for very hungry people). You’re free to fill these yourself with a choice of bio veggies and salads. These consist of about ten different kinds: cold potatoes with spices and raisins, a kind of tzatziki with yoghurt and cucumber, plain lettuce with tomatoes, green beans (I don’t usually love beans, but there’s something really tasty about these ones – I think it’s garlic), pasta salad with basilic and pine nuts, cold rice with veggies, carrot-and-coleslaw-salad, cold lentil salad and some great vegetable beignets. The options vary a bit daily. As toppings, they offer sesame seeds and two types of balsamic crème. I usually sprinkle my salad with the raspberry-balsamic.
So, their salad bar is really delicious and you’re free to fill your box with whatever you like. They also have quiche, wraps, sandwiches and the inevitable sweets. Cheesecake with a speculoos piecrust (which seems to be very popular in Belgian lunch places these days), apple pie, moelleux… All very tasty and a little waistline-hostile. Since it’s Friday and we all deserve a treat once in a while, I went for the lemon pie. At first tasting, it’s quite sour (which tends to happen when lemons are involved) but I don’t mind that. The crust is soft and nothing really special. Overall, the lemon pie is very tasty but slightly too sour and I personally would have liked the crust a little crispier. My sister’s lemon squares (which are just as sour but more balanced with a sweeter, crunchy crust) definitely win this one.
Another great thing at BioLounge is their packaging: the salad and pie is packaged in thin cardboard fold-yourself-boxes with biodegradable plastic. If necessary, you can get a brown paper bag to transport your goodies home (or more likely, to your office) and some wooden cutlery. That’s laudable, only too bad the city of Brussels doesn’t do green waste (except for garden waste during the summer). So it always hurts a little to throw away the cardboard box with the rest of the trash. Something for Brussels policymakers?
The BioLounge: really tasty salads, sandwiches , wraps and bio drinks for very good prices (cheaper than Exki)! It can be found at Onderrichtstraat 116 and is near Vrijheidsplein, Koningstraat, Congreskolom, Noordstraat, Madou… Check it out, if you like, and let me know what you think.