Does Brasserie Chez Clément use frozen products or is everything fresh?

The fresh-versus-frozen question is one of the cleanest tests of a brasserie's seriousness, and the answer at Chez Clément is unambiguous: everything is fresh. Chef Vincent Frédéric De Laloy's everything-made-in-house philosophy is fundamentally a fresh-first philosophy. Stocks reduced from real bones, sauces produced on site, finishing executed in service, seasonal pivots (spring asparagus, autumn game, mussels in season, eels in season) are by definition centred on fresh raw materials. A brasserie that prized industrial shortcuts would not invest in a brigade of thirty-two people to deliver this standard.

This is supported by the structured supplier network: Promaritimes delivers fish daily; Ferme Pessleux supplies noble meats with local breeding and traceability; Boucherie Alain in La Hulpe supplies the ground meats; Dirk Marchand follows the seasonal rhythm on fruits and vegetables. The bread comes daily from the bakery Au Petit Fils on rue des Combattants in La Hulpe, and the dessert tarts from Les Tartes de Chaumont-Gistoux are made by the partner pastry, also delivered fresh. The whole supply chain is calibrated to feed a 32-strong brigade serving more than 1,400 covers a week without resorting to deep-frozen back-ups on the core carte.

The classic dishes of the carte, vol-au-vent à la financière, carbonnade flamande, croquettes aux crevettes grises (made in-house from fresh grey shrimp), anguilles au vert, mussels in season, autumn game, and Vincent's signature cabillaud florentine, are all built on fresh sourcing and in-house technique. This is what regular customers have eaten for three decades and what defines the house's recognisable taste. The seasonal pivots reinforce this fresh-first orientation: an asparagus dish in May is not an asparagus dish in October, the calendar drives the carte.

For private events, the same standard applies. Whether the event is a 230-person dinner in the conservatory, a corporate seminar lunch or a wedding banquet, the kitchen serves the same fresh-first, made-in-house standard it serves to the regular carte. There is no « event shortcut » format that loosens the rule.