“La Canardière” was a spaghetti restaurant between 1969 and 2012, located in Brussels at the Porte de Namur, at 17 Rue Stassart. Show-offs were told off by Françoise or thrown out. The smoker wore a white ‘tablier d’un psy’, gold bracelets, link chains and a Rolex. French, Dutch and English flowed together there. Regulars included the saxophonist Manu di Bango, the actor Benoît Poelvoorde, ministers, and the royal family’s photographer Olivier Polet. Prince Laurent came by on his scooter. The most notorious Belgian gangster, ‘Le grand blond’ Patrick Haemers, and his wife Denise Tyack came there to recover after their robberies. For many years Françoise stood ready on Christmas Eve in the Marolles to cook for the needy. In 2024 she is still doing volunteer work. I came there often and was allowed to use Françoise’s garage to park my motorbike. Because Françoise is the first to pass on her recipe to me, I gratefully pay tribute to her.” – Pieter
La Canardière was a true Brussels institution, a restaurant where this recipe was served between 1969 and 2012.
A gigantic duck-hunting gun, ‘une canardière’, hung from the ceiling.
A canardière is a gigantic hunting gun of more than 2 m, used in the 19th and early 20th centuries, capable of bringing down a large number of waterfowl in a single shot.
Sybille (formerly Stephan) often came to ‘La Canardière’ with her iconic Delvaux Brillant handbag, which Princess Lilian (the stepmother of King Baudouin and King Albert II) had given to her grandmother. (photo: 2011 at La Canardière)
ingredients
- 400 g minced veal
- 300 g minced beef
- 300 g minced pork
- 5 cloves of fresh garlic
- 2 onions
- 4 carrots
- 1 leek
- 2 green peppers
- 1 red pepper
- 2 chilli peppers
- pepper & salt
- piment d’Espelette powder
- 2 x 500 ml Heinz tomato sauce
- 1 small jar of tomato concentrate
- olive oil
preparation
- Clean and chop all the vegetables, the carrots in thin slices and the peppers in small dice.
- Put olive oil in a casserole and, when hot, add the chopped onions
- add the garlic (Françoise had the garlic cut into small pieces, I put the cloves through a garlic press)
- Set the heat to medium, crumble the meat into the pan in small pieces; the meat must no longer show any red, it has to brown, always stirring
- Add pepper, salt and Espelette
- add all the vegetables
- mix well with the meat
- add the tomato concentrate
- add one box of tomato liquid and, halfway through, pour in the second box
- chilli peppers: wash, cut open lengthwise, remove the seeds
- simmer on very low heat for 3 hours, stir often
- If you notice the sauce is getting too dry, add a little water
“Instead of spaghetti I use capellini” – Pieter
Kathy worked at ‘La Canardière’.