Brug 132: I looked to like, but looking liking did not move
Please note that since writing this blog post, Brug 132 has closed down
As I was cycling home today considering the angle for this review, I asked myself whether it was pretentious to reference Shakespeare in the title. Yes, my brain replied, of course it’s bloody pretentious. But when has that ever stopped you before?
I’ve got Shakespeare on the brain (or rather, I’ve got Baz Luhrmann’s script writing on the brain), ever since I watched Romeo & Juliet on Sunday. I’d seen it about 20 times when I was a teenager, to the point that I could more or less recite every monologue, and I found it all coming back to me over a decade later through the fog of my sofa-ridden hangover…
Which is why, sitting outside Brug 132 yesterday on what felt like the first sunny evening in at least a month, Juliet’s words about her pre-Romeo suitor sprang to mind. Brug 132 has the perfect terrace: quiet, by the water, semi-leafy, not too big, not too small, with that I’ve-just-found-a-great-new-local-in-my-neighbourhood thing going for it. I looked to like, if looking liking moved. I really did.
But then the food arrived. The starter was lazy, if not offensive. It was supposed to be crostini with parma ham and pear. I’m not sure if the kitchen was trying to deconstruct a crostini (crostino?) but it felt like they just couldn’t be bothered to assemble it. Plus, the parma ham came in those too-perfect slices that screamed supermarket, vacuum-packed ham.
The mains got a whole lot worse. I’d ordered “rode poon” which, with hindsight, was already a mistake given that I didn’t know what it was. I figured it was fish, though, so how wrong could it go? Apparently, quite wrong. I’ve since Googled rode poon, and it translates as “tub gurnard” in English (or “red poon”, according to the ever-helpful Babelfish). That wouldn’t have helped me very much, since I don’t think I’d ever had one before, but I doubt it was supposed to be overcooked to the point that the flesh was clinging to the bones like an anorexic supermodel. It was dry, impossible to fillet, and lacked seasoning. It also hadn’t been properly prepared: my two gurnards still had half their fins flapping around their gills, and the skin was flaccid and rubbery. It came with fennel that had been cut into too-small slices so that it, too, had completely dried out in the oven. Bizarrely, it was also served with a “potato frittata” that was heavy on gelatinous egg and included a random selection of roasted peppers, carrots and chives, but very few potatoes. Oh, and salsa verde. My plate made about as much sense as Babelfish made of the fish on it.
My friend ordered a steak, which should have been safer. It came with a sweet potato mash, which looked and tasted like watery baby food, about half a pound of herb butter, and a string of cherry tomatoes that seemed to have been introduced to the oven but not allowed to get to know it (probably because it was too full of fennel and gurnard being cremated).
The only thing that’s rescuing Brug 132 from a miserable one star is its terrace, which I still really really like. I’ll return for white beer and pinot grigio of a warm evening; I just won’t be going anywhere near the menu. Romeo & Juliet, on the other hand, deserves to be visited again and again and again.
