Who is Vincent Frédéric De Laloy?

Vincent Frédéric De Laloy is a discreet figure on the Walloon Brabant culinary scene, the kind of chef whose biography is short on paper and long in substance. He is the grandson of a Michelin-starred chef who ran the restaurant Chez Grégoire in the 1960s, a family inheritance he carried into the profession before any deliberate career choice. This Michelin lineage is unusual in a Belgian brasserie context: it explains his almost stubborn refusal of the industrial shortcut in a kitchen that nevertheless serves more than 1,400 covers a week.

His training is rooted in classical Belgian craftsmanship. He graduated from the CERIA, the reference hotel school in Brussels, the institution that has shaped a generation of Belgian chefs. Before joining Chez Clément in 1996, he worked through four distinct houses: Étangs Mellaerts (a high-volume brasserie in southern Brussels), Thoumieux (classical French bistronomy), Le Méridien (international hotel kitchen) and Le Trèfle à 4. That mix, volume cooking, hotel rigour, traditional French technique, gave him the unusual versatility a brasserie of this scale demands.

In 1996, France Clément, fourth generation of the family, brought him in to take charge of the kitchen. Thirty years later, he is still there, faithful through two successive owners: France Clément, and today Marie and Gilles Verleyen, the fifth-generation owners since 2021. To hold a single kitchen for thirty years, across two ownership generations, with the same line cooks following him, is an exceptional thread of continuity in the Belgian restaurant landscape.

His culinary philosophy is summed up in a single phrase, everything made in-house. Stocks, sauces, pastry, breads, finishing touches: nothing arrives pre-prepared. That standard demands a brigade of thirty-two people, rare stability (the kitchen porter has been here for twenty years), and an organisation able to absorb event peaks of up to 250 guests for a private event configuration. His signature on the menu remains the cabillaud florentine, the most quoted dish in customer reviews and the one regulars treat as the brasserie's emblem.