An open tart of yeasted dough baked with maroilles and cream until the cheese collapses into the base. The Avesnois version of the northern savoury tart.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Flamiche is a family of tarts running across Belgium, the Nord and Picardy, each region filling it with what it has. Picardy uses leeks; Abbeville and the Somme bay use leeks and salmon; Dinant makes a curd-cheese version and founded a confraternity for it in 1956. The Avesnois version, the one Lille eats, uses maroilles, the washed-rind cheese first made by a monk at the Abbey of Maroilles in 962. It reaches the table hot and is meant to be cut in wedges and eaten with beer.
Common allergens: Gluten, Milk
Tip from the editors. Take the rind off the maroilles. Left on, it goes leathery in the oven and drags on the fork.
Bierbuik's brewpub on Rue Royale in Lille runs to 01:00 on Thursday and Friday and to 02:00 on Saturday, and the kitchen stops at 23:30 then.
Try: Frites sauce maroilles
Tip: On those three nights the bar outlasts the kitchen, so order food before 23:30.
La Ch'tite Brigitte on Rue des Bouchers in Lille is Clément Richevaux's estaminet, built on the northern dishes his grandmother Brigitte cooked.
Signature: Croque-monsieur au maroilles, Rollmops
Order: The maroilles croque-monsieur, or the mixed northern platter.
Tip: The room takes bookings only, and it spreads across two shopfronts on Rue des Bouchers.
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