Chez Léon — Restaurant in Brussels

Despite my visit to the Chez Leon being decent, i feel like i cant help but give only 1 star. Heres why:

At the arrival i was immediately impressed by the interior. It has a weird mixture of cozy, clutter and kitsch. The ambiance is cozy and seems like a place that would be wonderful to visit with a larger group to socialize in. A little warning; this restaurant seems smaller from the outside than it is inside so its possible you'll have to do a decent walk before you find your table.

We came in a larger group of people so i was expecting some chaos. Our waiter went through all our tables and wrote down what seemed like a small table plan and wrote down what each of us would like to have for our according courses, all well and good so far!

We got our drinks fairly quickly and then the starters started to roll in. Our options for starters were soup or a salad. My friends got their salad first and sadly have to say it didn't look very impressive. It was literally just a pile of salad leafs with a big slice of tomato and a slice or two of cucumbers on it, a bit of shredded carrot with a very light dressing, if any at all. My soup then arrived and sadly it wasn't any better. It was quite bland, is all i can say to it. All i could taste was possibly broccoli? No pepper, nothing else. Oh well i thought, looking ahead to the main course which i ordered the flemish meat stew (goulash) from, whereas my friends ordered 1/2 a roast chicken with according sides of course. My goulash arrived and that was the best part of the whole evening. Even though i have to say i think the choice to serve a stew with chips/fries is a bit questionable. I would've strongly prefered the cooked potatoes some people got on their dishes instead. The meat in the goulash was wonderful, very soft and fell apart great! Absolutely enjoyed it as a fellow goulash enjoyer. Sadly for my friends it took some time for their food to arrive but when it came it was a bit shocking. Indeed it was 1/2 a roast chicken with chips/fries and some side salad. In comparison to my portion of goulash, the chicken just seemed like a crazy whiplash of portion sizing. It was just WAY too much. Some couldnt even finish before the dessert popped by. One of the people at our table got themself the vegetarian option for their main course. It must've been the saddest thing i would see all evening in this restaurant. It was a small vegetarian patty (with breading), served with a little salad and a hefty portion of green beans. No sauce, nothing. It looked a little dry and i felt a little sorry for the person. For dessert the options were a homemade caramel pudding or a chocolate mousse. I tried some of the caramel pudding which was absolutely not my kinda thing. The caramel tasted a bit off and too bitter. The chocolate mousse on the other hand was quite nice and rich!

Now onto the reasons why i'm giving this restaurant only 1 star. As noted earlier, the restaurant service came with quite some chaos. The food came with a ranging size of quality, most foods were simply quite blandly served that could've really used some additional sauce or ANYTHING to make it more interesting. My main issue with the restaurant was the poor waiters though. Every single one that i met or seen, seemed absolutely overworked and seemed like they needed a long break. Some of the people in our travel group found the waiters came off as rude when you asked them for things but the issue wasn't that they're rude, the issue was that they simply had SO much to do that they couldn't keep up. This restaurant has SO much capacity like i've never seen before. Arguably WAY too much capacity. This restaurant needs to size down or get more waiters. Management really needs to step in and think of whats good for their workers. One of our waiters seemed to be in a bit of an argument with another waiter, seemed like he was way too stressed about the sheer size of having to handle so many people at once, he absolutely seemed like he was at the brink of tears. It saddened me seeing a hard worker be worked...

This famous restaurant in downtown Brussels has been a family-owned venue since it opened in 1893,when it was a modest "friterie" (a fried food place, typically seafood). Since it was grown into a maze of multiple levels, stairs and floors, à la E. M. Escher. The menu consists of a combination of typical Belgian dishes, like moules et frites (mussels and fries) served in different styles, croquettes de crevette (shrimp croquettes) and French dishes like steak et frites, raw oysters, and a number of other fried seafood dishes. The place was absolutely packed when we arrived as a party of six, and even more packed when we left around 7:30pm (there was a line outside, which I was told by our friends was not uncommon). We were quickly seated in the highest point of the restaurant, against a window, which was nice. The whole table ordered their "Léon spécial" which consisted of 600 gr of mussels in a classic Belgian sauce for mussels of, celery and wine, beer or house wine. I also ordered escargots (snails) in persillade (butter, gealic and parsley sauce). Bread was shared with the table. The escargots were very small, served in their shells. The persillade sauce was watery and thin, and not very good. I finished my escargots and was waiting for my mussels. I had to ask the waiter for water, bread and my glass of white wine. He seemed incredibly busy running all over the place (there were several other waiters equally busy). I know that the place was packed throughout its innumerable levels and floors, but the service was extremely lackluster. I finally got my mussels, which are traditionally served with fries and mayonnaise. Everyone at my table got their fries with mayonnaise servings; I didn't, so I had to again ask for it to our waiter, who was frantically running around. The mussels, were pretty small, but a decent amount. You order mussels because you want to get to the delicious juice on the bottom and sop it up with bread. There was a lot of sauce, but like the escargot persillade, was watery and had an incredible amount of shredded celery (I am not a fan of celery). Chez Léon seemed to me one of those incredibly touristy places that every city has that does not serve exactly the best food, but that they are famous and affordable. I substracted two stars out of five; one for the lackluster service and another for the lackluster food. There are many better places in Brussels to have a typical meal. Chez Léon may be one of the most famous, but not necessarily the...

I always try to be respectful and try to speak in their language word by word when I travel non-english speaking countries. But oh my gosh, what an unpleasant experience and careless servers that they have at this restaurant. Chez Leon is not living up to their reputation at all. I'm sure the star ratings will go down from this point if they don't choose the right direction as a restaurant. Food was mediocre, nothing special, it was actually better when I cooked mussels by myself and probably 1/3 of the price. I knowtheire marketing is to emphasize how fresh their mussels are... but hmm I'm not so sure. It didn't taste that fresh or special. Also, I noticed that all Asians were sitting in one area versus there was a higher up floor where it was FILLED with Caucasians... Paris tries to hide it at least but wow, Belgium! Country where UN is located!!! Far more to go when it comes to racism. Also, the server who was "bringing food to my table" didn't even give me the change, just the bills and then asked me "any tips for my service today?" I wonder if he asks the same questions to the locals or anyone who speaks French? The attitude though!! I asked him back - is it required to tip in Belgium? then he murmured. NO SIR, please do not force "Asian" tourists to tip you. We all know it's a bad culture in America. Literally America is one of the few countries where they tip for service. Plus, you weren't even that friendly! You didn't even smile or asked how we're doing! That's not service, that's called doing your basic duties... classic example of a good restaurant going to a downfall because of their servers getting too used to ripping off tourists... Oh by the way, I set in a corner near to the kitchen, one of the bench had a metal panel with name "Tiset", next to the TV screen. That's proves that I was actually there....