Belgians are quick to tell you that they have the world's most Michelin-starred restaurants per capita, but I find those in the capital vaguely obscene and stuffed with smug bureaucrats filling their snouts while padding their expense accounts. I think that the Brusselois are striving to outdo the French in food snobbery. Maybe they're suffering from Paris envy. In search of an unpretentious lunch, I take the 90-minute train ride to Dinant, a town on the River Meuse that purports to be the home of Leffe beer.
Visitors to Dinant are gently seduced by slow river rides, a funicular railway, waterside bars and moules-frites. Its faded glory is reflected in jelly-mould mansions, priories with witchy turrets and a church with a spire shaped like a turkey baster.
It turns out that the monks of the Abbaye de Leffe have not brewed its eponymous beer for the last 150 years: it is now made in the Stella Artois factory at Leuven. Beer-fanciers hoping to worship at the altar of Bière Leffe are mocked with Europe's cheesiest visitor centre.
Dinant's other claim to fame is that Adolphe Sax was born here, and piped saxophone music à la Kenny G ruins my consolation bottle of bière blonde at the Leffe cafe. Fittingly, the beer is served with skewered cubes of hard cheese.
Dinant's good name is saved by a wonderful family-run restaurant five minutes from the station. Le Thermidor is sunny, airy and panelled in blond oak. It is run by Jennifer and Steve Pécasse, who bought it from Steve's parents, and is as real as the Leffe experience is fake. Steve cooks, Jennifer serves, their infant daughters giggle, and the place smells of wine sauce and fresh flowers. I trust Le Thermidor immediately, let Jennifer choose my lunch, and relax into a bottle of house red. A salad of warm goat's cheese is lifted by vinaigrette made with sirop de Liège, the local apple syrup. Ris de veau is sexy and delicious, a timbale of rice surrounding the sweet soft glands in their deft sauce of mushrooms, cream and sherry. Sherry? I question. "It's how Steve's dad always made it. It's good. Why change?" In complete agreement, I squish hot chips into the rich sauce until it's all gone, and then Jennifer brings some more.
Le Thermidor is what the French call "correcte" - timeless, comfortable in its skin - and so conforms to everyone's ideal of the perfect provincial restaurant. I decide on a later train in order to make my meal last longer, so Jennifer brings me a warm slice of filo filled with fresh apple, and Steve's spekulos (Belgian spiced biscuit) ice cream on the side. While I'm enjoying coffee and really good chocolates from the shop across the road, I wonder if I should stay for dinner.
· Le Thermidor, Rue de la Station, 5500 Dinant (00 32 82 22 31 35, restaurant .thermidor@skynet.be). Menus from €15.
Casa Bo (+82 69 98 69, casabo.be) is a surprising, inspiring B&B at Falaën, 5km from Dinant. Rooms from €90.Take the Eurostar (eurostar.com) to Brussels and your return ticket grants free travel to any Belgian train station.
