Arabelle Meirlaen
Michelin-starred chef Arabelle Meirlaen's restaurant near Liege: intuitive, plant-forward cooking drawn from a kitchen garden, beehives and the seasons.
Arabelle Meirlaen is a Michelin-starred chef, and her eponymous restaurant, set in the countryside near Liège, is one of Belgium’s most considered destinations for plant-forward dining. In 2019, the We’re Smart Green Guide named her the best vegetable chef in the world; the cooking earns the title.
The setting is part of the argument. The restaurant comes with its own vegetable garden, a chicken coop and beehives, and the kitchen takes its lead from what they yield. Menus shift with the harvest, the freshness and colour of spring giving way, by autumn, to mushrooms, root vegetables and warmer, spiced notes.
Meirlaen calls her style ‘intuitive’, a way of cooking built around what feels good to the body depending on the season and the weather. Into it she folds what she has learned from herbalism, naturopathy and Ayurvedic cooking, so a meal here is composed as much as it is plated.
The detail runs deep. Fermentation and pickling keep waste in the kitchen to a minimum, gluten-, lactose- and sugar-free dishes are part of the offer rather than an afterthought, and a substantial cellar rounds out the experience.
It sits a little over an hour from the spa town of Spa itself, which makes a neat pairing: a morning at one of Belgium’s wellness retreats, then lunch at a table where the garden, quite literally, sets the menu.
