Checking out the latest hype: Maison Mathis - Quartier Bleu

For my yearly "high school classmate" reunion, I went to Maison Mathis, a Belgian bistro located in Quartier Bleu in Hasselt. Quartier Bleu is a new shopping district located near the canal in Hasselt center, it includes some shops and a couple of new restaurants too. One of the restaurants, called Maison Mathis, was all over my Instagram during the first few days of the Quartier Bleu opening. I asked a bit around about everyone's experiences and received very mixed feedbacks. Some people liked it, others liked it but thought it was too expensive, others didn't like it at all, etc. So I wanted to check it out myself.

We were with 4 girlfriends of which one had already visited the restaurant twice. She has had one good and one bad experience so she was as curious as I was, to see how this time went. To start of the night we ordered some nachos (€14,50) that came with 3 different dips, cheese sauce and a cup of chopped tomatoes with guacamole. The nachos were really good and I loved the fact that they were still warm when they came to our table. I also liked the different dips, though we were all disappointed that the cheese sauce was cold instead of warm. The price is also more to the expensive side even though we had multiple dips and a big bowl of chips.

For our main course we all went for something save as we had all heard the mixed comments. We ordered:

• Pizza Margherita (€13)

• Pizza Vegetarian (€14,5)

• Cheese croquettes (€13,5) with fries (€2,5)

• Steak Tartar (€20) with fries (€2,5)

Everybody enjoyed their dish only I was struggling with the size of the vegetables on my Pizza. The eggplant slices were cut way too thick which made it a bit impossible to bite through them and it also took away from the rest of the pizza's flavour. As you can see on the picture most vegetables on the pizza were pretty big. I would have preferred them being cut in bite sizes, to make it easier to eat the entire pizza. Besides that, the pizza was really good, it had a lot of cheese on it what I LOVE and the vegetables were also seasoned well.

I love that this restaurant has a pretty extensive menu, to make sure everyone has something to eat. They have 10 vegetarian and 10 vegan dishes. On the menu you can find; fish, meat, salads, pizzas, classic Belgian dishes, burgers and pastas.

The staff was friendly as well, we mainly had the same waiter every time, who was very polite and enthusiastic. Another waiter, who helped us too, was a bit more uptight but still friendly.

The restaurant is very big and busy, though it still feels cosy and the talking of other people also isn't that loud nor disturbing. Overall I think we had a good night with good food though the prices are a bit on the higher side. Our pizzas were priced normally but the other dishes were a little bit expensive and I think it is ridiculous to ask €2,5 extra for some fries. The croquette dish also didn't include a salad, which makes it even more unacceptable to ask a price of €13,5 for only 2 croquettes.

I think it's nice to visit Maison Mathis on a sunny day, when you have the option to sit outside next to the water because then you also pay for the view. Personally, I think the prices are a bit too high, once something is done about that I would definitely recommend trying out Maison Mathis as the food we had was tasty and well prepared.

A bientôt!

Bisous