Who is the head chef at Brasserie Chez Clément?

For a curious British visitor stepping into the brasserie for the first time, the name of the chef is a useful anchor. Behind the calm of the dining room and the steady rhythm of two hundred to three hundred covers a service stands a single, very stable figure: Vincent Frédéric De Laloy. He has been the head chef of Chez Clément continuously since 1996, three decades of unbroken service in the same kitchen, a length of tenure that is genuinely uncommon in a Belgian brasserie of this volume.

Vincent was hired in 1996 by France Clément, the fourth-generation owner, and has continued under the fifth generation since Marie and Gilles Verleyen took over in 2021. Three owners, one chef, that single-line continuity is part of why regulars say the brasserie “tastes the same” today as it did fifteen years ago. The same hand has been writing the script of the menu for thirty years.

His pedigree is quietly remarkable. Vincent is the grandson of a Michelin-starred chef who ran the restaurant Chez Grégoire in the 1960s, a piece of family heritage he received almost before he chose the profession himself. After classical training at the CERIA hotel school in Brussels, he passed through four respected kitchens before settling at Chez Clément: Étangs Mellaerts, Thoumieux, Le Méridien and Le Trèfle à 4. That mixed exposure, volume brasserie, international hotel, classical French house, shaped his approach to the role.

At the helm of Chez Clément, Vincent runs a brigade of thirty-two people. His philosophy is summed up in three words: everything made in-house. Sauces, stocks, pastry, finishing touches, nothing arrives ready-made. His signature dish on the menu remains the cabillaud florentine, a benchmark item that has crossed generations of customers. The brigade he leads is unusually stable: the kitchen porter alone has been washing dishes here for twenty years.