#139: Eat The Rich
Brussels Commune Advent Calendar Day 14: Woluwe-Saint-Pierre
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This is part 14 of a series of short sketches from of every one of Brussels’ 19 communes, and today we’re about to indulge in some festive gluttony.
Going to Rob The Gourmets’ Market was my first mistake. Going to Robs The Gourmets’ Market on an empty stomach, that was my second mistake.
I should have known the vibes were off when I arrived and the only way into the shop was through the car park. Above the double doors at the entrance was the supermarket’s motto in big white font: DEDICATED TO GASTRONOMY. The first thing I see on the inside is a perfectly arranged display of exactly ripe avocados alongside a small pyramid of persimmons. Behind them, just beyond the shop’s welcome desk, was a line of yellow Veuve Clicquot bottles with empty glass flutes. The shop smelled entirety of truffles, or truffle concentrate, rich and earthy, and unwelcome on an empty stomach.
Beyond the entrance display was the fruit and vegetable section, the produce kept fresh and vibrant by a system of parallel tubes pumping out a constant spray of chilled water vapour over everything. Then came the fish monger’s, and I stopped in front of a display offering caviar for €136 a kilo. A dead-eyed, slippery John Dory stared out from its bed of ice with a vacant, pleading look across the aisle to the standalone cabinet stocked with fatty, thick and funky-looking slabs of T-bone and other assorted steaks. I did not look to see how much they cost. Not in search of anything in particular I strolled the aisles to see what had brought such a crowd to Rob on a Friday lunchtime, because the shop was heaving. There was New Zealand manuka honey for €40 a jar. Little rose-coloured 150 gram tubs of Sal de Ibiza for €20. Bottles of absinth for 60 quid and of whiskey for figures reaching into the hundreds. Passing the spice ails and spotting a jar of Za’atar for sale for €8 I was reminded I could get double what they were selling at less than half the price at our local Sunday market, but then it didn’t claim to be “premium recette authentique”.
It went on like this throughout the shop, and by the time I came to the shelves stocked with bright red tins of Foie Gras D’Oie for €33 I was positively vibrating, and I swear I could hear the first bars of “The Internationale”. Never mind the tins of Lyle’s Golden Syrup or tartan boxes of Walker’s Christmas puddings, in the face of this grotesque display of luxurious gluttony, I was ready to eat the rich. I was, also, very hungry.
I found the source of the truffle fumes, someone at the cheesemonger’s station having put out little sample tasters of a hard cheese the rind of which had been infused with the black fungus. I grabbed at a couple of them. There was another plate on the next counter over, so I grabbed some more. I walked past the pastry section and goggled at the meringues and bouchons de Noël, and saw that they had four-packs of the short little soft Pretzel-style rolls I’ve only ever seen in German train station bakeries, so I picked up a packet of them too. The next aisle over was the drinks, or more specifically the beer aisle and that is where my class solidarity dissolved in a pool of my own gurgling gastric juices. I had been seduced by the breadth and depth of their selection, from big bottles of Wallonian farmhouse winter ales to canned small batch Brussels-brewed IPAs, and all the reassuringly-familiar suspects - De Ranke, Verzet, Alvinne, Cantillon, Struise, St Bernardus, and more besides. They even had a fridge plugged in and keeping some beers cold for immediate consumption - a rarity even still in some Brussels bottle shops. I pulled from it two cans of L’Érmitage beer, one a straight-up stout and the other their Jasmin-infused Pale Ale.
Before allowing any more opportunities to further disgrace myself, I took my breads and my beers and went to pay at the checkout of a very friendly cashier. The sun was still out, just about, when I emerged outside again, and around the front of the shop’s oversized brutalist concrete facade I found a bench to sit on and have my lunch. Sitting there eating my rolls and supping on my beer and flipping through the supermarket’s Christmas season brochure (half-cooked whole duck liver for €158 a kilo, anyone?), while school children milled around waiting for the tram, I started to mellow on Rob The Gourmets’ Market. Maybe it did have its place in Brussels, and really I shouldn’t be too mad about its excesses - wealthy people had to eat too, didn’t they.
On one corner of the shop’s exterior I saw there was a big yellow road sign informing people they had arrived in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre. The sign also listed the cities with which the Brussels commune was twinned, including the Gangnam neighbourhood in Seoul. I did not know much about that place beyond the Psy hit song from 2012, but I knew enough about its bougie reputation to think that Rob The Gourmets’ Market would probably have fit right in in that corner of the Korean capital. Below that another city was listed: Goma, in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
In January 2025 the city was overrun by M23 rebels, causing over 660,000 people - many of whom who had themselves already fled there from other parts of the region - to leave, adding to an already-dire humanitarian disaster in Eastern Congo that has witnessed thousands of deaths, weaponised sexual violence, and accusations of war crimes and human rights violations. The Norwegian Refugee Council describes the situation in the DRC as “the largest hunger crisis in the world, with 27.7m people experiencing high acute food insecurity”.
The truffle cheese was now beginning to repeat on me, leaving an unpleasant, muddy sour taste in the back of my throat. My hunger now sated, I was beginning to think my initial instincts were correct.
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Was my go to find Atrium beers, Avec les bon Voeux (when it was sold all year round), Blaugies Saisons, De Struise's and De Ranke's catalog (including Hop Harvest on the day of release). Those days are over.
Love it! That is the closest supermarket to me. I went once a decade ago and have never been back. There's a Colruyt just up the street for us normal folks. I didn't know about the beer selection though...