Epoque Belgian Beer Cafe

I’ve been to Belgium more times than is really necessary. That said, this place makes good Belgian food. In fact it tastes like the Belgian food in Belgium. One taste of the mussels and I’m right back in Belgium, when in fact I’m really in Cammeray, which honestly isn’t nearly as cool as being in Belgium.

We’ve been coming to Époque Belgium Beer Café for quite some time now; Sydney has very few funky European places to eat good food and drink good beer, and this has been one of those great treasures. The food has always been consistently tasty, with their signature muscles and a fantastic beer menu a great success.
Unfortunately when we went there last weekend something was drastically different: the menu has changed quite a lot, but also the overall feel of the place was different. For one, the staff looked like they were deflated by something, and then there were the new television sets all over the walls. We found out the place was bought by the same people who own Cargo Bar. I can already see a fundamental mistake, if you buy a business you should first pay careful attention to what made it work in the first place — being different was what made this place stand out. It brought soul and culture to an empty and boring suburb. Putting TVs on every wall and creating a rowdy sports-​obsessed bar is not different — it’s like every other pub in Sydney! If I want to watch sports and scream my heart out I have an massive choice of pubs all throughout this city of ours.
But not only that, this has been the very first time of about a dozen times we have eaten here, that the muscles were not fresh, they felt gooey and unpleasant to swallow, some with beards still attached. We drunk good beer but we left disappointed, disappointed mainly by sub-​par muscles, but also by the new management who just does not get it. Even the old staff are moving on.

Much like the soul of a crackhead, Cammeray was a dead grey hole before Epoque opened up and single-​handedly made the strip cool again, attracting other like-​minded businesses and giving the style-​starved punters on either side of the hill somewhere to bust out their best boat shoes and pressed checked shirts.
The beer menu is ginormous, and I mean that both literally and figuratively — there’s like 100 different drops on a menu the size of a bed sheet (but with less stains). The drinking is good — loads of dark, obscure, monk-​brewed drops — but I come here for the mussels. They’re astonishingly tasty. Enormous pots of red curry flavour, or Provencale, or white wine, chili and coconut, or blue cheese, or. .. look, just get some mussels up ya, okay? They’re eighteen kinds of awesome.
Clutches of bright-​eyed mid-​twenty-​somethings prop up the tables on lazy weekend afternoons, and there are always a couple of attractive girls in floral summer dresses nursing raspberry beers for a reason I don’t understand but don’t feel like questioning.

Possibly the only reason to go to Cammaray (if you know of another reason, please let me know). It is just like the Belgian Beer Café in the CBD, but less crowded and easier to get to if you live in the North Suburbs.
If you are a beer far, you know that the Australian beer market is somewhat lacking. Yes there is James Squire, Coopers, Little Creatures, 4 pines, Murrays, and a few other beers here and there, but the majority of beers are lagers with not much depth (I’m talking about VB, XXXX, Touheys…). So you can come here and get some nice Euro beers.
They got your lambics, they got your kwak (with the goofy glass), Pirat beer, Chimay… it is everything you want but cannot find other places. Then you got some nice European style foods. I am a fan of the pork belly entrée (the main size is too much pork fat, even for me).
The best advice I could say is go during mussel night. Nothing like a bucket of mussels for $ 10

I love this place, as an ex local it was our favourite dinner and drinks bar. The interior is very authentic they actually measured everything here then sent those measurements back to belgium made the interior and shipped it back! The food has always been great and the beers and atmosphere fantastic as well. Just wished I still lived nearby, this is one of the few places that isn’t all show no substance.

With dozens of imported bottled Belgian beers (with the right glasses for each) and several on tap (with three sizes each!), this is a good place to get your euro beer fix. As comfortable for dining as drinking, it’s got more dividers and table privacy than most Aussie pubs. Some nights they have live entertainment — mostly of the guy-​with-​a-​guitar variety — to the side of the bar. Beer prices aren’t cheap, but this isn’t the city centre either. Worth a treat now and then.

I have to confess I didn’t come to Epoque, the Belgian beer café, for the beer. My reasons for coming would, in a convoluted and possibly strained way, be similar to if those very friendly people from Woolworths or the David Jones’ food court offered you free food and you then threw the chicken sausage away but then kept the little plastic cup it came in. The scenario is sorta equivalent to how I came to come here. I came to Epoque to meet an associate after he suggested for us to meet there (ie the offering of something) even though, and this is important, I don’t drink beer (the chicken sausage) and yet, stayed for a while and came back again of my accord (the holding on to what was being offered even though I completely shunned the main product being spruiked).
I drink a diet coke here. So lame. But I like Epoque. The bar is L-​shaped and behind that sits the dining area where you can feast on schnitzels and Belgian-​style sausages amongst other meats. But I don’t come for the selection of meats, I come time and time again for the crowd. Everyone here always just look so darn nice. So, respectable, even.
Make sure you say a little ‘G’day you cunning little Belgian’ to Tintin in the bathroom.

Cammeray’s nightlife may well be limited, but what there is is booming with character as Epoque proves.
A beer café with a difference, its interior, all wood panelling and wrought iron chandeliers, is a genuine Belgian beer café which has been dismantled and rebuilt within its Cammeray premises. As a result you can’t help but feel transported on a wave of beer back to the aged and historic streets of Belgium, minus the cold…
It’s more filled out during the winter months as it draws punters in from the cold with it’s laid-​back atmosphere. The menu is diverse and wholesome, though everyone raves about its speciality, mussels. Served in a big dish with big hunks of chips on the sides, there is an option of 9 different sauces to marinade these mussels in.
Highly recommended for a pub-​session with a difference.

With dozens of imported bottled Belgian beers (with the right glasses for each) and several on tap (with three sizes each!), this is a good place to get your euro beer fix. As comfortable for dining as drinking, it’s got more dividers and table privacy than most Aussie pubs. Some nights they have live entertainment mostly of the guy-​with-​a-​guitar variety to the side of the bar. Beer prices aren’t cheap, but this isn’t the city centre either. Worth a treat now and then.