I hadn’t had a sugary sweet Bonte waffle in awhile. I’ve been passing their damn stores all the time driving or walking around, and they are always closed because it isn’t the middle of the day… so I was determined to get one last weekend. It was my “healthy” breakfast. Ha! It certainly hit the spot.
After checking out an outdoor festival, we decided to go for some smoothies. We were gonna go to Reading Terminal Market, but then remembered seeing a smoothie place in Northern Liberties. It’s called Euphoria, and is part of a chain, but it was pretty nice, if not slightly weird. Nicely decorated, clean, with free wi-fi. Smoothies, bubble teas, juices. But also stuffed pretzels, weird stuffed sandwich things, and even sushi. They also have some korean cookies/crackers for sale, but they’re individual packets from within a box, and I know you’re not supposed to sell them by the packet. That’s the weird part.
There’s tables and stools and couches too. It seems like a nice place to hang out with a smoothie, surf the web, play a board game, whatever. There was only one person making smoothies so it took a long ass time. But you can make your own combo, and my passion fruit, mango, kiwi turned out tangy and delicious.

Last Saturday, E turned 40. Whoa. The big 4-0. To celebrate, M threw him a Belgian themed par-tay. After all, he’s Belgian. Makes sense, eh? For starters, a smoked salmon appetizer on pumpernickel mini toasts. I’m not that into smoked salmon normally, but I dug this stuff. I think it helped that I’d fasted all day in preparation for this gorgefest.

The main course on the menu was forced meat chicken. E had been craving this dish. What does forced meat chicken mean? It’s chicken, stuffed with a ground meat type stuffing. I’m not sure what was in it, but it included meat as well as pistachios. And it was tasty whatever else was in it. The chicken was cooked very well, not dry at all, and not pink!

Also served was a pureed carrot souffle. This was light and delicate, and didn’t really taste like carrots much. That’s good, because I’m not a fan of cooked carrots. This was cooked in ramekins in a water bath. Way too complicated for me. This was served with a butter sauce to put on top.

M also cooked up cranberries and oranges and then served it in orange halves. Sweet, tangy, and delightful.

There were a few vegetarians in our midst, so M also prepared a tempeh salad. This wasn’t quite belgian. It had tempeh, mangos, and pickled red onions, with a vinaigrette. I loved it! I’m gonna definitely get the recipe for this one.

And the piece de resistance? Belgian waffles! One of the guests brought a waffle maker over, and made fresh hot piping waffles. He had the special sugar for these, which had been shipped to him from Belgium. It was an unexpected highlight to end this fabulous meal.

Zot is a fairly new Belgian restaurant to grace the Philadelphian scene. We weren’t sure, but we think it opened earlier this year. Located on an unfortunate block of Lombard near South Street, it serves “belgian food by a belgian chef”. The place is very attractive. You can definitely tell they spent a lot of money on the construction and decoration. Located in an old rowhouse, there’s a wine bar and piano in the first room, the regular bar in the second room, and then just dining at the back.
We got there fairly early on a Sunday, so for awhile, we were the only patrons in the place. Everybody had a beer before we were seated, but I was not partaking that evening. They do have a tremendous beer selection. They’d better, after all, it is belgian. The tableware was also attractive. The water glasses slant sideways. The silverware is freakishly long and different.

I and L ordered the pate as an appetizer. It was served on a piece of 12×12 ceramic tile. This is the first time I’d ever witnessed anything like this. Although cute, honestly, it was much too big for the small tables. The tables were already overrun with crooked glasses and long skinny silverware. The tile was just too much real estate for not that much food. The pate also did not come with enough bread/crackers. And while they did give us complimentary bread, it was gone very quickly and they weren’t very good about giving us more. We had to keep asking. You’ll see that as a running theme here.

I went with the orval onion soup as an appetizer. I enjoyed this very much. It’s pretty much their take on french onion soup, but made with orval beer and with different cheeses on top. It was strongly flavored, yet as you can see, a bit too charred on top.

For main courses, the options are few: a selection of mussels, a selection of various meats, or a selection of fish. And with each of these, you can pick the sauce or the ingredients for how it is prepared. D ordered the monkfish. The green sauce is the spinach garlic sauce. With meat/fish entrees, you also get to pick a starch. D picked the stoemp bacon. Stoemp is basically like mashed potatoes, but also includes other root vegetables, and in this case, also bacon. The fish and the sauce were quite good.

L was a brave one. She went with the sweetbreads. I forget what kind of sauce she picked. She picked the stoemp with leeks. I’d never had sweetbreads before, so this was a real treat. To my surprise, I liked it!

I’s selection was the duck breast. I believe he got this with the choron sauce. Choron is like hollandaise or bernaise, but with some tomato puree. The duck was extremely well cooked. I’m not a duck fan myself, but my little bite was scrumptious. I’s stoemp of choice was with carrots.

So that left me, and I went with mussels. I picked the “snob” mussels, which are made with lobster bisque, cream, and cognac. I only got the 1/2 kilo but there were plenty of mussels for me. And they weren’t puny either. There was a good mix of sizes and some were quite large. I enjoyed them a lot. In fact, I really enjoyed all the food that night.

So the service is lacking. Seriously. They don’t fill your water much. They do the first time and then leave wine bottles filled with water on the table so you can refill. But they don’t check to see if you need any more. Like I said before, they also don’t give you more bread. They also don’t really bother to check if your food is ok. And they certainly don’t seem to care if you get the food that you order. And don’t get me started on the check. I don’t know how long we had to wait until they picked up our check, and getting change, even that was a hassle.

It’s a pretty restaurant. It has pretty servers. The food is pretty. But really, it’s missing something. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s just too much show and not enough substance. It’s all very pretty, but underneath it all, you see some homeliness. They definitely need to step up their game because Zot could be so much better. It has so much potential, but it has to follow through. Otherwise, you’re going to keep reading reviews like mine.