Eetcafé Basseville

Photos and words by Cliff Lucas.
Edited by Breandán Kearney.

Café Society is a photographic series which celebrates the spaces at the heart of Belgian beer culture. See more here.

Nathalie Gouwy grew up just a few steps away from Eetcafé Basseville in Wulvergem. She came here quite often as a kid when it was still run by the Ally family—the same family that had owned the café, originally called “A La Basse Ville”, since its beginnings in 1830. Early on, the café shared its red brick building with a shoe cobbler on one side (some of their original wooden shoe lasts still hang from the ceiling) and a general store on the other. Those rooms now offer seating for people interested in a meal or watching a cycling race on TV. The late Frank Vandenboucke, a renowned Belgian cyclist during the 1990s, was a frequent visitor who often sat for a card game with his supporters. In 2018, when the café’s fifth-generation owner, Sabine Ally, was no longer able to continue the family business due to health complications with her feet, two different owners unsuccessfully tried their hand at running the café—one even removed the coffee machine to make way for a beer fridge that would allow for a menu of over 400 offerings. So when Nathalie and her husband, Christof Verde, decided to take over the café in 2023 and restore its status as a true village pub, they knew they had big shoes to fill. They reopened the kitchen to offer a simple menu and they focused on serving local beers, such as the Wulvergemse Tripel and de Platte Tuub from Basseville Brew Works. Christof, a saxophone player, installed a jukebox and hung old musical instruments on the walls to complement the beer trays affixed to the wooden ceiling. Today, Eetcafé Basseville is a regular stop for locals and tourists from all walks of life thanks to Nathalie and Christof’s “leave your shoes at the door” attitude, and of course, the coffee machine that they brought back.