Melanie Tam

We called on a Sunday to make reservations for the same night at 8 pm (FYI - ressos are important in Brussels because once they’re full, they’re full - you can’t even wait). We showed up at 7:30 to see if they would be able to seat us and they did. I initially found this place on Google because we needed some Chinese food and this place had good reviews/was close by our hotel.

I’m not sure if the food was worth the 40 minute wait, but it satisfied the craving. We had the steamed pork dumpling. This was pretty meh - you could get similar quality in the freezer section. We then had the black pepper chicken. I was thankful for the huge portion but it was pretty salty. It definitely needed more than the bowl of rice it came with. Finally, the best dish of the night was beef chow fun. I didn’t have high expectations for this one but it tasted pretty close to the ones at home in NYC, with plenty of wok hei. I’d definitely recommend this dish and if I were a betting woman, I would guess that their other noodle dishes might be pretty good too, so maybe just stick to those.

Moof stands for the Museum of Figurines. It also says 'Comics Museum' so just make sure you don't get it mixed up with the Comics Arts Museum because that one is very different. We stopped in on a Friday just after 4:15 with the Brussels Card. There weren't too many people there at that time. It's a pretty fun museum with lots of figurines, and even life size superhero statues. It's not very big because I guess you can really only fill a place with so many figurines. We spent about 45 minutes to walk through everything, so you don't need too much time to explore everything.

So many different names for this museum on the internet. There's this, the Belgian Comic Strip Center, and the Comics Arts Museum. We stopped in because we had the Brussels Card but honestly, probably would have skipped it if we didn't have it. It was just before 12:30 on a Friday. It's cool if you like the smurfs or are super into comic books (which I am neither). I did like the exhibit where they featured women policitical comic artists from all over the world. We spent probably about half an hour before we left.

What a cool museum! It's included in the Brussels Card but if you don't have it, tickets are €15, which I think is still worth it. It's so unique. It's a collection of musical instruments from all over the world, and many of them are hundreds of years old. All of the instruments are in a glass case or behind a rope (for obvious reasons) and they give you an audio guide to listen to what it sounds like. There were so many instruments I had never even heard of.

We got there at around 10:30 on a Saturday and there were a good amount of people there already (they open at 9:30). It got crowded later on so I would recommend going on a weekday if you can. We spent about an hour and a half there and got through most of everything we wanted. There are four floors, so at first, we were listening to every piece but eventually we started to just choose the things we were interested in. If you were to listen to everything, my guess is that it would probably take 3-4 hours. They have over 2,000 instruments.

Highly recommend, if you love music and are looking for something different to do!

I love Kinka Izakaya! Hubby and I had been to the Montreal location before so when we were visiting Toronto for the weekend, and I saw they had a location there, I made us a reservation. Our resso was for 8 pm on a Saturday night and it was packed. Looks like a popular spot for bachelorette parties because we saw a few there.

We ordered the oyster kakimayo, sashimi platter, carbonara udon, and curry cheese bibimbap. The oyster kakimayo is a fave. We ordered this in Montreal and I liked it there too. It’s cheesy and garlicky - what’s not to love? The sashimi was good too but pretty standard. My favorite piece was the ebi. The udon was great. It comes with a perfectly poached egg that you mix in with the noodles. Bibimbap was fine - nothing special. It probably could have used more cheese but I don’t think it’s something you couldn’t make at home with those Japanese curry blocks.

I wish they had a location in NYC. The prices are also very reasonable for an izakaya so you get a good bang for your buck. Guess I’ll just have to visit again the next time I’m in Canada.