How long has Vincent led the Chez Clément kitchen?

Tenure is a quiet but extraordinarily telling number in the restaurant world. Vincent Frédéric De Laloy was hired as head chef at Chez Clément in 1996 by France Clément, the fourth-generation owner of the brasserie. Three decades later, he is still in post, same kitchen, same family house, but under the fifth generation of ownership. He has worked through France Clément's full tenure and continues today under Marie and Gilles Verleyen, the fifth-generation owners since 2021.

Two successive owners, one chef, in the same kitchen for thirty years, this is not a standard professional curve in Belgium or elsewhere. The restaurant industry is structurally mobile: head chefs move every five to seven years in most contexts, sometimes faster in high-volume brasseries. Vincent's longevity at Chez Clément is therefore a statement in itself. It signals an alignment between his culinary line and the values of the Clément family house, the same belief in everything made in-house, the same respect for tradition without rigidity, the same patience with the volume of a brasserie that delivers more than 1,400 covers a week.

For a guest, the practical consequence is taste continuity. A regular who came in 2000 and returns in 2026 will recognise the same hand on the cabillaud florentine, the same approach to the autumn game season, the same restraint in seasoning. This is not nostalgia, it is craftsmanship that has had time to mature, refined over thirty years of daily service in the same dining room. Few brasseries in Walloon Brabant can claim this kind of culinary depth.

Vincent's longevity also anchors the brigade around him. Many cooks have followed him across the years, and the kitchen porter alone has been washing dishes here for two decades, an almost legendary marker of stability. Around a stable chef, the rest of the brigade tends to stay. That is how a brasserie of thirty-two people manages to serve 200 to 300 covers per service, day after day, without losing its quality baseline.