First Taste: Bastone Brasserie

Bastone Brasserie brings the old world to Royal Oak, with Belgian influenced cuisine and beer brewed on site. Brasserie, translates to an informal brewery where delicious, simple food is served.

Bastone will satiate diners looking for a full food experience in true gastronomic fashion at an affordable price. Not to mention the comfortable and antiquated environment made to look and feel like an early 20th century Belgian Brasserie, with dark wood ceilings and tables contrasted by white tiled floors. 

Executive Chef, Casaundra Portalski, says she likes to keep the menu, “traditional, Belgian, French comfort food.”  Portalski has been the chef at Bastone for four years and also runs the food for all of the attached business: Vinotecca, Commune and Cafe Habana.

The menu offers hors d’oeurves like a whole head of roasted garlic with herbed goat cheese, that could easily be eaten as a snack with some beer. The pate de maison, a pork and chicken terrine is a popular item.  Entrees are in the same fashion, hearty and simple dishes that satisfy the palate like the hanger steak served with Aligote potatoes and blue cheese butter--way better than a normal steak and baked potato. 

Belgian cuisine is so interesting, because of its history as a trading epicenter. The cuisine is kind of a mix between French and German food. The trading influence allowed spices, untraditional to Western Europe, to infiltrate their cuisine and beer. 

Get the full dish on Bastone