tsewei’s blog

I never really liked beer. Gassy, bloats me up, bleah. Quite puke-inducing sometimes too, so, definitely bleah.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, Brewerkz. And since my Tokyo visit, Japanese beer. And I’ve just discovered something else — Hoegaarden beer!

Friday night — TGIF (for Au Yong), and a little treasure hunt downtown.

Armed with a not-so-detailed map, we walked up and down the streets of Shinjuku, and finally by a stroke of luck, located our dinner place nestled in a narrow dark alley.

Cafe Hoegaarden. A tiny restaurant serving Belgian food, and of course, Hoegaarden beer!

- the Hoegaarden Grand Cru for him, and the Hoegaarden Le Fruit Defendu for me. Mine’s fruity (yay), his is a little stronger (hic), both excellent stuff. -

Au Yong’s been telling me about this beer ever since his Auckland trip, and after trawling the net for an hour, I decided that this place is worth checking out.

And it was definitely a good choice. Although we had to wait a bit for seats (that tiny place really couldn’t fit more than 20 customers), and we panicked when we *wrongly* realised that the menus could be only in Japanese (turns out there are *some* English labelling.), we were soon sipping nice strong ale, and feasting on yummylicious food.

I must have eaten like ten mussels. (We managed to translate “mussles” on his handphone and picked out the correct item to order kihkihkih..) And they’re fat, juicy, succulent and fresh. Nothing like the tiny anoroxic ones I get back home. And this comes with a healthy serving of carrots, celery, and onion. *slurp* Yummy with the beer too.

And now, it’s time for my little observation on beer:

• beer back home (like Tiger, and Carlsberg.. the import from Thailand types) — icky. refer to: first para of this blog post.
• Japanese beer (like Asahi and Yebisu) — dry and smooth. Goes down really well, and suspiciously all Japanese food taste good with them, so you’d eat and drink and eat and drink and not realise how much you’ve actually drunk (and eaten).
• Hoegaarden — strong, but nice flavour. Can’t drink a lot of it, but it tastes good.

whee~ My tummy loves this country. heheh.