Nénu

Smoke, Char, and the Vietnamese Grill Tradition in Saint-Gilles

Rue Dejoncker sits in the lower stretch of Saint-Gilles, a street that operates well below the tourist radius of the Grand-Place yet draws a knowing crowd that tracks restaurant openings the way other people track gallery shows. The neighbourhood has built a reputation for mid-market tables with genuine kitchen ambition ANJU works Korean contemporary at the same price tier, Colonel Louise anchors the meat-and-fire end of the block, and Dolce Amaro holds the Italian corner. Into this context, Nénu has carved out the Vietnamese contemporary slot with enough consistency to earn back-to-back Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition in 2024 and 2025.

The atmosphere on arrival reads as deliberately informal without sliding into self-conscious casualness. The room projects the kind of energy that comes from a team that has found its register: attentive without stiffness, enthusiastic without theatre. That enthusiasm is noted directly in the We're Smart® assessment of the kitchen, which describes the team as radiating genuine engagement, a quality that is harder to sustain at the Bib Gourmand price band than the awards calendar might suggest.

What Vietnamese Grilling Actually Means on the Plate

Vietnamese food in Europe has a credibility problem that has nothing to do with the cuisine itself. For decades, the diaspora restaurant format locked Vietnamese cooking into a pho-and-spring-roll shorthand that obscured the regional complexity of the source tradition. The grilling traditions of central and southern Vietnam, nem nuong, the fermented pork sausage cooked over charcoal; bun cha, the Hanoi-origin dish of char-grilled pork patties served over vermicelli with dipping broth, represent a separate culinary language from the soup-forward north, one built on direct heat, caramelised fat, and the specific bitterness that live fire introduces to protein.

Contemporary Vietnamese restaurants operating at the level Nénu occupies are working inside that tradition while extending it. The comparison is instructive: kitchens in Hanoi such as Gia and Backstage have spent years reframing Vietnamese technique for a tasting-menu context, establishing that the cuisine carries enough structural depth to operate across multiple registers. What Nénu does in Brussels is position itself at the accessible end of that contemporary Vietnamese tier, the Bib Gourmand designation confirms that the price-to-quality ratio is part of the editorial identity, not just a market circumstance.

The plant-based dimension of the menu adds a layer of complexity to the grilling question. We're Smart®, the vegetable-forward food guide, gives Nénu its recognition while noting that the plant-based range could extend further. That observation positions the kitchen at an interesting point: it is doing enough with vegetables and plant proteins to register on a specialist guide's radar, but the full range of Vietnamese grilling tradition, with its emphasis on marinated and char-cooked meat, remains present and central. The result is a menu that reads across different dietary approaches without fully committing to any single one.

Chef Masaki Misaka and the Contemporary Vietnamese Frame

Within Belgium's broader fine-dining geography, the Vietnamese contemporary category occupies a smaller niche than the country's French-rooted fine dining tier. Restaurants such as Hof van Cleve, Boury, Zilte, and Willem Hiele define the upper end of Belgian restaurant ambition through entirely different traditions. Even in Brussels specifically, Bozar Restaurant and Bartholomeus operate in distinct registers. Nénu does not compete in that bracket, and nor is it trying to. Its competitive set is the neighbourhood table that earns repeat visits through consistent cooking and a room worth returning to.

Chef Masaki Misaka's name carries a Japanese register that is itself a signal of the cross-cultural dynamics at work in contemporary Vietnamese cooking in Europe. The cuisine has always absorbed external influences, Chinese, French, Cham, and the contemporary iteration of that tradition in Western cities frequently involves chefs who came to Vietnamese food from adjacent culinary frameworks. What the awards record confirms is that the kitchen produces food that Michelin's inspectors found worth returning to across two consecutive years.

Placing Nénu in the Saint-Gilles Dining Pattern

Saint-Gilles rewards the kind of evening that begins with no fixed itinerary. The €€ price positioning puts it in the same tier as ANJU and below the €€€ bracket occupied by Colonel Louise and Dolce Amaro. For diners building a longer Saint-Gilles evening, Flamme and iOda offer different genre options within the same neighbourhood radius.

The full depth of Saint-Gilles dining, drinking, and hotel options is mapped in the EP Club Saint-Gilles restaurants guide, alongside the bars guide, hotels guide, wineries guide, and experiences guide for anyone spending more than a single meal in the commune.

Planning Your Visit

Nénu sits at Rue Dejoncker 21 in 1060 Saint-Gilles, within walking distance of the main transport corridors connecting the commune to central Brussels. The €€ price range makes it one of the more accessible tables in the neighbourhood at this award level, consecutive Bib Gourmand recognition typically signals that a kitchen is punching above its price point rather than resting at it.

What to Order at Nénu

What the awards record and critical context do confirm is that the kitchen's plant-based dishes carry enough weight to earn specialist guide attention from We're Smart®, while the broader Vietnamese contemporary format suggests that preparations drawing on grilling and char traditions are present and central to the menu's identity. The We're Smart® note that the plant-based range could extend further implies that the kitchen's strength is distributed across the full menu rather than concentrated in a single dietary tier. At the €€ price point with Bib Gourmand confirmation for two consecutive years, the editorial consensus is that the value-to-quality ratio holds across multiple visits.