Is Chez Clément a family restaurant or a gastronomic one?

The word “family” applies to Chez Clément in two very concrete senses. The first is ownership: this is a family business in the most literal way. Henri and Sidonie Clément opened the coaching inn in 1858; Jules Clément and Marie-Lidwina took it over from 1923; Marcel and Andrée ran it from 1954 and added the wine bar in 1976; France Clément expanded the format from 1996; and since 2021 Marie and Gilles Verleyen lead the brasserie under J and JJ Brasserie SA. Their daughter June is gently woven into the next chapter. Few brasseries in Walloon Brabant can show five consecutive generations of family operation.

The second sense is the audience. On any given Sunday lunch you will see grandparents, parents, teenagers and small children around the same long table, multi-generational gatherings are a recurring shape of the dining room. The carte makes this possible: traditional Belgian dishes that please an eighty-year-old grandparent and an eight-year-old grandchild equally well, vol-au-vent, croquettes, sole meunière, steak tartare, gibier in season. The kitchen is led by chef Vincent Frédéric De Laloy, in the house since 1996, with a thirty-two-strong brigade and a kitchen porter who has been part of the team for twenty years, the kind of staff stability that makes the dining room feel like a family that has known you for a while.

Practical features reinforce the family vocation. The seated capacity of 230 makes it easy to gather a wide table without a complicated negotiation; the conservatory and the bar area give natural alternatives if your group is restless or unusual in shape. The huge free car park ten metres from the door removes the logistical friction of getting everyone there. The full step-free access makes it equally workable for grandparents with reduced mobility or parents with a pushchair. The seven-day service window covers Sunday lunches, weekday family dinners, holiday gatherings and the long off-season weekends in equal measure.

To answer the question directly: Chez Clément is not a gastronomic restaurant. It is a family brasserie in the Belgian sense, an institution that has welcomed local families across five generations and continues to do so today, in a green corner of Walloon Brabant ten metres from the boundary between Genval and La Hulpe, twenty-five minutes from central Brussels.