De Broers van Julienne — Restaurant in Antwerp

Lovely peaceful garden and good vegetarian food.

Unfortunately I discovered at the end of the meal that - despite advertising that they accept Visa - they do not in fact accept Apple Pay visa payments (either with credit or debit cards). My physical cards have both suffered some damage from being carried around in my wallet and do not read properly, and I have been quarantined in Belgium for a while without being able to replace them.

So...I suggested I simply wire the money to the restaurant's account, since I did not have a Belgian 'Bancontact' card. The very polite staff telephoned the owner, Micha, to check.

I am afraid with Micha it was not such a customer-friendly experience. He appeared irritated to be disturbed and and rudely lectured me: "You should never go out for a meal without having the money to pay". An acceptable proposition of course - except, I did have the money, and had been incorrectly led to believe that a foreigner could pay via Visa. Not so.

I pointed out that his restaurant advertised it accepted visa, and that it would be good to get card machines that can use Apple Pay. He got angry at this suggestion, and said his card machines were 'very modern' and updated six months ago. He had 'never' had a problem with Apple Pay. An odd response, I thought.

He refused to accept a wire transfer and insisted I find someone else to pay. 'What if I check my account and the money is not there?' he asked. I had offered to leave my id details to reassure him, but he declined.

Now anyone can see that yes, there is sometimes a credit risk if someone has technical payment problems: they might not pay. But instead of assuming that your guest is a thief and insulting the customer repeatedly, my gentle suggestion is: give your customer the benefit of the doubt and try and help if there is a difficulty.

My wife was able to pay in the end. But Micha appears to me to be very poorly suited to any customer-facing role. My impression from the evening was that his customers, and indeed his staff, deserved a more helpful and better mannered...

I had high hopes. First impressions were good. The space is nicely decorated. I had to walk from my hotel to get to the place and arrived at about 8.15pm (the website said it was open until 9). I was immediately told I could only have a main dish, which I thought was a bit unfair, but ok. I was told to sit at any table, so I chose one of the tables for 2 that wasn't directly next to other diners. I was then asked to move as sitting there would be in the way for the waitress (then why have a table there?). I chose a tagine with cod for my main, and ordered a hole made ice tea. The ice tea wasn't to my liking, but that's just a matter of personal taste, there will probably be just as many people who would have loved it. However, the cod fish balls (bits of fish mixed with other things and shaped) in the tagine were so salty as to be totally inedible. I am used to eating salted cod (this wasn't advertised as such) and this was so much worse. I removed all of the cod balls and put them in the bread dish and ate the rest - which wasn't particularly flavoursome and definitely not what would be expected of a tagine. The staff saw me doing this but didn't ask if things were ok. I explained to the waitress when she came to collect the dish that the fish had been impossible to eat and again when I was paying. She just didn't seem to care. Some flavour combinations won't suit my palate, I can accept that. I mark this place down for serving inedible food (super salty fish), not seeming to care and not taking any steps towards customer...

A surprisingly cold and unfriendly place, a really weird experience.

5+ hours before the closing time, in the middle of the shift, I walked into a dark space in complete silence. Peek left: no other customers, peek front: counter full of good looking and prettily assembled dishes that - when one looks at the list of ingredients - is in 7/10 cases just carbs, and behind the counter an awkward girl who seems uncomfortable with my very presence.

I pick a dish (13.90€), and then I find out that will be 24€ if I want to eat in. Since I don't want to pay extra 10 euros for sitting in the dark, I grab the hastily assembled to-go box.

No cutlery gets offered, no questions asked. Food is very cold and it's hard to say if it's mediocre by itself or if it's the cold hiding the flavors.

I'm left with the regret of contributing to this...