Station 3

Chinese dining in the Brussels periphery: what Kraainem's Michelin-recognised address tells you about the scene

Station 3 is a Chinese restaurant in Kraainem, Belgium, with back-to-back Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition in 2024 and 2025. The commune sits on the eastern edge of the Brussels Capital Region, a residential strip where the dining offer runs mostly to neighbourhood brasseries and family trattorie. Station 3 sits directly on that square, Statieplaats 3, and its presence there says something useful about how Michelin's Bib Gourmand category functions in Belgium: it consistently surfaces value-driven cooking in locations that the destination-dining circuit ignores. For Chinese food specifically, that scouting work matters, because the category in Belgium remains thinly covered by the kind of critical attention that follows French or Modern Flemish cooking.

For context on what surrounds Station 3 in the broader Belgian fine-dining picture, the €€€€ tier is dominated by addresses like Boury in Roeselare, Hof van Cleve in Kruishoutem, and Zilte in Antwerp, all operating at the upper end of the Flemish creative tradition. The restaurant occupies a different register entirely: €€ pricing, Chinese cuisine, and a neighbourhood address that places it closer to the daily-use end of the dining spectrum. That is precisely what the Bib Gourmand is designed to flag.

The morning ritual and what dim sum tradition demands of a kitchen

Dim sum service is one of the more technically demanding formats in Chinese cooking. The tradition originates in Cantonese yum cha culture, the practice of drinking tea alongside small plates that arrive continuously, either from bamboo steamers brought tableside or from a kitchen producing to order. At its most disciplined, the format requires precise timing across a wide range of preparations: har gow wrappers that hold their translucency without splitting, siu mai with enough structural integrity to survive a bamboo steamer without losing filling, turnip cakes that develop a crust without drying through. The margin for error across a full dim sum spread is narrower than it looks from the dining room.

In Europe, the standard for this kind of Cantonese morning-to-midday cooking has historically been set by London's Chinatown and a handful of addresses in Paris's 13th arrondissement. Belgium's offer has been thinner, concentrated mostly in Brussels rather than the periphery. The Bib Gourmand recognition the restaurant has received in both 2024 and 2025 places it in a small peer group of Chinese kitchens in this country that Michelin inspectors have returned to and scored consistently, a meaningful signal in a category where a single visit might catch a kitchen on an outlier day. Two consecutive years of recognition suggests the cooking holds at a level that repeats.

Chef Joshua Torres leads the kitchen. In the context of a Chinese restaurant earning Bib Gourmand recognition in Belgium, what matters about that credential is less the individual biography and more what it implies about kitchen discipline: Michelin's Bib Gourmand standard requires both quality and value to coexist, which means the kitchen is holding technique at a level that justifies recognition while keeping the price point accessible. That combination is harder to maintain than either element alone.

Where Station 3 sits in the Belgian Chinese dining tier

Chinese restaurants in Belgium earning Michelin recognition are rare enough that each one occupies a distinct position. At the higher end of the price spectrum, addresses in Brussels operate with more elaborate formats and longer tasting structures. The restaurant's €€ positioning, roughly the cost of a two-course meal without beverages, places it in the accessible tier, where the cooking has to do more with less. That is not a limitation; it is a different discipline.

For comparison within the broader Kraainem dining offer, Maxime Colin operates a Creative French format at a different price tier and with a different competitive set. The two restaurants don't overlap in audience or ambition, which is part of what makes Kraainem's dining scene more varied than its residential character might suggest.

Beyond Kraainem, readers interested in the European Chinese dining tier might find useful reference points in Restaurant Tim Raue in Berlin, which operates a Chinese-influenced format at a significantly higher price bracket, and Mister Jiu's in San Francisco, a Michelin-starred address that has reframed the Chinatown Chinese restaurant format in the American context. Both illustrate how Chinese cooking is being repositioned at the premium end of Western dining markets, a shift that makes the Bib Gourmand level in Belgium look like its own coherent tier rather than a consolation bracket.

Planning a visit

The restaurant is at Statieplaats 3, 1950 Kraainem, on the station square, which is accessible by rail from Brussels. The €€ price range covers a typical two-course meal excluding beverages.

Readers looking at the broader Belgian dining circuit at the higher price tier might also consider Bozar Restaurant in Brussels, Willem Hiele in Oudenburg, Bartholomeus in Heist, d'Eugénie à Emilie in Baudour, L'Eau Vive in Arbre, La Durée in Izegem, and Ralf Berendsen in Neerharen for context across different regional styles and price points.

What regulars order at Station 3

Given the Bib Gourmand recognition and the Chinese format, the kitchen's strength almost certainly lies in the items that require the consistent execution, steamed preparations where the wrapper quality and filling balance are exposed without the cover of saucing or frying, and any roasted or wok-fried dishes where heat control determines the result. In a kitchen at this recognition level, the dishes regulars return to are rarely the showpiece items; they are the ones that hold their quality across every service.