The Beautiful Youth
You’d quickly forget the few months of RectoVerso’s existence—it’s not that far back. We know that time flies, very quickly, too quickly. We know that hours turn into days, days into weeks, and weeks into months. Time slips away, we know.

At RectoVerso, we witnessed the early days, revealing a cuisine that already promised so much. Assertive, precise, flavorful, even back then. You could sense Robin Van Habost, Loïc Thirion, and Thomas Serbeniuk were more than just collaborators, infused with the wild energy of a fresh start, propelled toward the bright horizons opening ahead of them. At the end of winter 2021—just yesterday, really—and from the first dishes they sent out, they knew they had to ignite their own fire, drawing people in, without boasting or reassuring themselves too much about small, easy victories.

The result today is that, while their natural tendency is towards discretion, their cuisine speaks for itself. Hard work remains, and the connection between them is still strong—obvious, even. It’s their foundation, their base, their law.

Back to reality. The restaurant’s dining room is beautiful, bright, long, adorned with fine materials from the region—nothing is incidental. It’s broad and wide open to the kitchen, like a stage looking out onto its audience. Luminous and lively, it aligns perfectly with the loyal crowd, expertly guided by Noah Meunier toward attentive service and the refined wine expertise that RectoVerso is known for.

Then there’s the plate, the other essential part. It delivers. It moves forward every morning with an almost nonchalant serenity, with definite precision, full of promise, and curious about the many seasons yet to come. We can talk about the ingredients, examine the cooking, scrutinize the seasoning, taste the sauces… and all we’ll see is a kind of wonderful intoxication.

What we’ve also found in the collaborative dance of these young talents is that essential quality—doubt. Doubt... Doubt that allows them to search, to try, to fail, and to return, ultimately offering a cuisine of sensations, with perfectly balanced flavors, no excess, beautiful but not overly flashy.

LD