With his family background, it's hard to imagine Bart Vandaele in any business other than food. Born in Flanders in the west of Belgium, his grandfather was a butcher. His father's family had a grocery store that sold fresh vegetables. His parents ran a café with a dining hall behind for big events and Vandaele, owner and chef of Belga Café, the Belgian bistro and fine dining restaurant on Captol Hill, says he spent so much time there he was raised by the café's maitre d' and cleaning lady.

His father encouraged him to rebel and turn away from any thought of a future in a professional kitchen. But at 12 he went to cooking school in Bruges, doing stages all over Belgium from 14. The school he went to taught everything connected with catering - mathematics for accounting, business studies, knowledge of wine and beer and which work best with which dishes, and how to serve properly at table. "We also had to be the customer. If you're constantly in the kitchen, you can't understand what the customer wants."

He began his career in 1- and 2-star restaurants in Belgium and arrived in Washington as chef to the Dutch Embassy before working for the European Union ambassador. Seven years later he decided he had reached a ceiling. "I was saying to myself, okay, what now? I've worked as a private chef. Should I do a restaurant?"

One Thursday in 2003, he was mulling his future over having drinks with friends in Capitol Hill where he lives. The following Monday he got a phone call from a woman who said, I hear you want to open a restaurant. If you're interested, I can show you a place.

Vandaele showed up at the spot where Belga Café now sits and found absolutely nothing in it but bare walls. "But I thought, this is about the size I can use." He wasn't sure, however, what exactly he would use it for. He knew he wanted to do a Belgian restaurant but hadn't thought what kind of food - classic cuisine? Bistro fare?

"Then it became clear. I wanted to do Belgian-French fusion and Belgian-Belgian also. I wanted to do Euro fusion fine dining and a bistro, too."

So he let the design of the building mirror the menu. Both are divided. One side of the restaurant has finished decor (there's a saxophone on one wall in tribute to its Belgian  inventor) while the other side is bare brick. One aspect of the menu covers Belgian bistro classics like moules frites - mussels with fries - various ways, and beer stews. On the other, fine dining dishes might include venison cooked with rhubarb, and duck  breast with a sauce based on beer. This year the restaurant was nominated for the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington's Neighborhood Gathering Place of the Year award.

Having begun in the business so early, he's still young, yet has already put 27 years into it. He's at home putting his hand to both sophisticated and rustic cooking. "I do this for a living. I slaughter pigs. I know how to kill a sheep. What makes Belgian cuisine so Belgian is it's down to earth. Most Belgians have a garden. They grown their vegetables. If it's big enough they have chickens, rabbits. They know about food, about seasons. If you are a restaurateur and you give strawberries in the winter, people go..." (Here he screws up his face in a disgusted grimace.) "You go into the garden and you say, what do we have to cook with today?"

He'd like to put planters on the roof of Belga Café and grow at the very least fresh herbs to snip. But he'd really love to have a restaurant in the country. Most of all, he'd like a life of endless vacation by the water feeding friends who drop in unannounced around 9.30 at night "for a little to eat, a little to drink".
 

Belga Café, 514 8th St SE, 202 544 0100.