Au Stekerlapatte

The verdicts

• I_Am_A_Sparerib

  2.5

  Meat flavour

  2.5

  Sauce flavour

  2.5

  Tenderness

  2.5

  Sides

  2.5

  It’s been... a while. Long enough that the details have softened like butter left out too long, long enough that memory has stopped being factual and started being suggestive. I went to Au Stekerlapatte once — for spareribs, apparently. The receipt (which I no longer have) or a friend (whom I might be misremembering) told me so. But when I try to recall the food itself? Nothing. Not even a ghost of a flavor. And yet, I feel compelled to say something. What I can say is this: I remember the sense of having eaten. That delicious heaviness that settles into your bones after a meal done right. The sense that somewhere, sometime, something was roasted, glazed, slow-cooked — possibly involving ribs, definitely involving time — and it ended up on my plate, and then it was gone. I don’t remember the seasoning. I don’t remember the sides. I don’t remember if I picked the meat clean or politely left a few bites as a nod to restraint. I couldn’t tell you if the ribs fell off the bone, or if they put up a fight. But I do recall that I left feeling... satisfied? Or maybe it was just full. Who’s to say? The ambiance? Indeterminate, though I have an impression of warmth. There were probably walls — maybe wood-paneled, maybe not — and the lighting was certainly some kind of lighting. A candle? A bulb? Sunlight filtering through old glass? It was all there, or it wasn’t. In the end, Au Stekerlapatte remains, to me, a culinary Schrödinger’s box: both exceptional and ordinary, both memorable and completely forgotten. It’s a place I know I went, but can't quite return to — not in memory, anyway. Would I go again? Absolutely. Partly to relive that mysterious meal... but mostly to finally remember what the food was like.

• The Meat Man

  3.8

  Meat flavour

  5

  Sauce flavour

  5

  Tenderness

  2.5

  Sides

  2.5

  The sauce... THE SAUCE... I got lost in the sauce...

• The Romanian

  3.1

  Meat flavour

  3.5

  Sauce flavour

  3

  Tenderness

  4

  Sides

  2

  Trek de stekker er maar uit lapatte, er ontbrak voor mij een deftige patat... Zacht vlees, goed afgekruid van smaak en de bijhorende saus was lekker. Minpunten want het was in focking brussel