The road is now on the other side of the road, just three steps away, a little closer to home. It's already been a good year since Julien Malaisse left the whirring success of his table in the center of Vedrin, to cross the causeway and take refuge in this magnificent stone building. Move, move, go and see if you're there. But we're talking about much more than simply dropping your suitcases and knives into new walls. Julien Malaisse has rethought everything, as if he wanted to find a new lease of life, a new impetus, to explore a different path. This one is made of serenity, of quietude too. A magnificent dining room with sober, luminous colors, almost embracing the large open kitchen. It also features a lovely terrace for opening or closing drinks, and a living room that invites you to begin or end your meal with elegance. Two pretty bedrooms too. And soon, a wine cellar for private wine exchanges.

Today, if Julien Malaisse's kitchen has travelled a few hundred metres, it's to go further and also come closer. With his new home, the young chef from Namur is looking to take his approach to more ambitious preparations to the next level. Like the free man he is, he is also strengthening his wandering spirit, curious and sincere, asserting himself and his desire to get as close as possible to his local producers.

Today's stroll included Pressé de Homard, pastèque, mélisse et haricots, Lieu jaune, anguille fumée, eggplant, béarnaise dots and mirin jus, Rouget en croûte, piperade, aïoli and bouillabaisse jus, and Boeuf en deux manières: onglet grillé aux échalotes accompanied by a fine tart, and paleron en cannelloni et écume de parmesan. To round off this fine moment, the Black Forest, magnum chocolate guanaja and cherry jubilee.

The dining room, while now led by the excellence and expertise of Michel De Muynck, continues to ensure kind service and spontaneous, precise attention. In this classy space, there's no fuss, no unnecessary hullabaloo. The story is lived in and towards a new elsewhere, and Julien Malaisse rewrites an already well-defined storyline with a modern touch.

LD