Gare Maritime — Local services in Brussels

The space is amazing. Empty at my visit, but it could easily host thousands. You feel like an ant in the great hall, and it's a frightfully pleasant experience.

However. The food court is atrocious. The food itself was amazing, perfectly cooked pasta in portions that were just enough. But ordering as a foreigner, for which french is extremely hard to speak and understand, was horrendous.

The webpage that you're supposed to order from does not work properly on Android, and unless you have a Belgian phone number, good luck changing your country.

None of the staff in the "order-here" station spoke any English. We had to do a point and gesture, until a lovely Belgian woman helped us translate to french.

This was not unexpected, I am fully content that not everyone speaks english in the European service industry. However, when every sign and instruction written anywhere is in English, when the webpage is in English, when the whole place is oriented as an international meeting point - and you have a service point for orders that don't work through the website, it's evident that there are some underlying issues in management.

I'd be surprised if they can host 350...

Nice setting, but slightly disappointed in food offering. The QR code on the main billboard was out of service but the individual QR codes at every stand worked.

Ordering is easy.

Confirmation SMS does not work for food but did work for drinks.

Routing one Gare Maritime could be better. The building is so nice, almost a museum. Too nice. Dare to be disruptive and make better signage in the building. Finding the toilets is a hassle with very small indications.

Treat this space as a commercial space with better signage instead of small signage that gets lost in this massive setting.

Try to have a better food offer and more useful retail offer. Bring life to the space instead of trying to keep it alive.

Get out of your induced coma, Gare Maritime! Bring some life to this part...

Incredible building and great events. Still underutilised as a landmark in Brussels but I hope that improves.

It is becoming the heart of the neighbourhood but the neighbourhood is still relatively quiet and that reflected in this place.

They need to attract more office workers and after work socialising. They also need to tasks someone with really making this a community used space to really make this a hub. They have so much unused space that they could looks at open g parts up to community groups and enterprise, it doesn’t all have to be profit driven and then they’d see results in the atmosphere...