When I was looking for more modern restaurants to try out in Bruges, Belgium, KOK AU VIN kept popping up. It has excellent reviews on Google too, which gave me a bit of confidence. I was surprised that we could get a booking with only a few days’ notice. In fact, our hotel receptionist was surprised at that too! We attributed that to it being the middle of winter in January. It was quite ironic when we showed up at 7pm that we were the only people there. It started to fill up a bit more when we left around 9:30pm – I guess people dine a bit later in Belgium!
Fresh bread 
Condiments to go with the bread including butter, pâté and olive oil
As with our dinner at CHAGALL, we were served complimentary bread and condiments first up. I guess we can say that this was a liiiittle bit more fancy than what we were served at CHAGALL though! We got a beautiful (still warm!) little loaf to ourselves, plus three condiments. Churned butter – who can say no?! Especially when it melts as soon as it touches the bread. Again there was some sort of meat pâté and also some olive oil. It was really hard not to fill up on this, knowing we had ordered some pretty hearty meals!
As a starter, we ordered the Plate of great Italian and Spanish charcuterie (€20). I love that they included the word ‘great’ in the description! And great it truly was: we had 5 different cured meats, some of which I’d never tried before! Truly delicious. But with the generous portion it was hard trying to save some space for the next dishes…
Coq au Vin with garnishments (€25) 
Potato croquettes 
Cabbage salad
Our mains:
With a restaurant called KOK AU VIN, you can’t skip ordering the actual coq au vin (€25). For those not familiar with the dish, it’s chicken braised in wine with mushrooms – in this particular dish they also threw in some speck which was awesome! It was probably some of the most delicious chicken I’ve ever eaten.
The dish was definitely enough by itself, but it also came with potato croquettes and a cabbage salad. No complaints about the potato croquettes – they were basically like up-market potato gems! The cabbage salad was quite simple, but it was nice to have some greens. I always struggle to get enough greens when I’m travelling!
Pheasant, pumpkin, lentils, mustard, Brugge Tripel beer (€28) 
Pheasant, pumpkin, lentils, mustard, Brugge Tripel beer (€28)
DS had another dish that was very hearty and perfect for the cold weather – Pheasant, pumpkin, lentils, mustard, Brugge Tripel beer (€28). Pheasant is something we don’t get much of in Australia I think, so it was a good thing to try while over in Europe. DS had no complaints about this dish. The pumpkin puree was deliciously smooth. Overall though, it was also quite a heavy dish. Perhaps don’t order a starter if you’re planning on having one of the heavier mains – there were also lighter mains.
Speculoos cake, tangerine butter cream, white chocolate (€10) 
Speculoos cake, tangerine butter cream, white chocolate (€10)
I know I’ve talked a lot about how big and heavy the food was…however, we spotted the speculoos cake on the dessert menu right at the beginning of our night and decided we had to order it no matter what. Speculoos is a spiced biscuit that you can easily find around Christmas time in Belgium and the Netherlands. We are huge fans of it, in particular we love the Lotus speculoos spread. So of course, how could we resist speculoos cake?!
I’m not sure the pairing with tangerine worked. The citrus flavour didn’t match with the cinnamon and spice of the cake. I think I would have preferred the cake without any of the tangerine pieces or butter cream!
Overall, though, we had a lovely experience at KOK AU VIN. It was great to try a more modern take on some traditional dishes. We definitely rolled out of there super bloated and never wanting to eat again, so maybe I would recommend ordering less than we did or take a bigger group so you can share!
