Around 9 a.m. on a Saturday, Vine Street in Over-the-Rhine is still half-asleep. A few cyclists coast past the old brick storefronts. Someone walks a dog. Then you smell butter — real butter, the kind that hits before you’ve even reached the door of Taste of Belgium — and suddenly the morning has a point.
You’re here for the liège waffle. That’s the answer, and if you’ve never had one, let’s be clear about what it is: not a grid-pressed, golden, light-as-air breakfast waffle, but a dense, chewy, yeasted dough studded with pearl sugar that caramelizes against the iron and leaves the outside crackled and glossy. It’s closer in spirit to a brioche than to anything you’d drown in maple syrup, and it comes out warm enough that the sugar crust is still snapping when it lands on the counter in front of you.
The OTR location on Vine is the original, opened by Jean-François Flechet, a Belgian transplant who started selling waffles at Findlay Market in 2007 before outgrowing the stall. The dining room isn’t large — expect to wait on a weekend, and expect the line to move faster than you’d think. Order at the counter, find a seat if one opens up, and eat before the pearl sugar cools. Plain is a legitimate choice. So is the one with Nutella and fresh strawberries, though you’d be forgiven for feeling it gilded the lily.
The menu goes well past waffles, and that’s worth knowing before you go. There’s a full brunch lineup: eggs benedicted onto waffles, omelets, quiche, and a rotating cast of specials that actually rotate. The Belgian farmhouse eggs — scrambled soft with herbs and a generous hand with the butter — are the kind of thing that makes you slow down and eat rather than inhale. Wash it down with a proper café au lait or, if you’re feeling it, one of the Belgian beers they pour from a short but well-chosen draft list.
Prices are reasonable by any downtown standard. A plain liège waffle runs around five or six dollars. A full brunch plate lands somewhere in the twelve-to-sixteen range. You won’t leave hungry, and you won’t feel like you’ve been charged for the neighborhood’s zip code.
What makes Taste of Belgium worth putting on a Saturday itinerary — rather than just noting as a place you keep meaning to try — is that it manages to feel both local and slightly out of place in the best possible way. OTR is full of beautifully restored nineteenth-century buildings and ambitious small restaurants, and Taste of Belgium fits right in, yet the food itself is genuinely Belgian, not a Cincinnati interpretation of it. Flechet brought the recipe over from Liège, uses the right pearl sugar, and hasn’t watered anything down to make it more approachable. It’s approachable on its own terms.
Go when the morning is still quiet if you can manage it. Bring cash for the counter, though they take cards. And if you’ve already had breakfast, go anyway — a plain liège waffle is small enough to justify as a midmorning snack, and your afternoon self will thank you.
