This is a bit of an addendum to yesterday’s post where I briefly mentioned that between the fun day out and the disaster of the drive in, we stopped for dinner.

The Takoda restaurant and ice cream parlour is located directly opposite Alden Biesen and appears to do quite a roaring trade. We’d booked a table and I was rather glad that we had when I saw that they were already having to turn people away at three o’clock in the afternoon. I suspect that they’ve removed about a third of their tables in order to comply with social distancing rules, but I was still surprised at just how quickly the restaurant filled up.

On the subject of viral changes, many restaurants are now using disposable menus. The menu is printed on a plain sheet of paper which can be simply thrown away once everything that can be ordered has been ordered.

The Takoda had a slightly different approach and, I have to admit, that I don’t know if this is in response to the coronavirus or if they’ve always done it like this. Instead of having a physical menu, there are a couple of QR codes on the table — one of them takes you to the main menu, the other to the desserts and ice-creams.

This approach works reasonably well if you have a decent internet connection and a QR code reader installed on your phone — everyone else had to borrow mine — but was undermined a bit once our orders were placed and the water reappeared with drinks and place mats. On the place mat was printed, of course, the menu.

The food, though, was superb. The boys all went for burgers (they had quite a variety) and the waiter was impressed that the twins had managed to eat everything placed in front of them. I was less surprised as the burgers did look spectacularly meaty — so much so that I momentarily wandered if I should have gone for the same. The mixed grill soon put that thought out of my mind, though, because it was glorious.

In fact, the food was so good that I decided to risk an Irish coffee. This is something which, when done well, is fantastic but which is so often no more than a coffee with a shot of whiskey and a blob of squirty cream.

Luckily for me, the Irish coffee at the Takoda is done very well indeed. So much so that I would be willing to go back for this alone.

Now I just need to find another excuse to go back to Bilzen.