Out to Eat . . . at Brasserie Benelux in Saratoga Springs (2024)

The menu features Austrian potato pancakes, Swedish meatballs, Viennese veal wiener schnitzel and bitterballen, inspired by Amsterdam.

The Brasserie is owned by Armand Vanderstigchel, a Saratoga resident and son of Dutch immigrants who lived in the Netherlands for 17 years. He is the author of “Adirondack Cuisine,” a cookbook inspired by his first visit to the Spa City in the 1990s, and was featured on a PBS Mountain Lake television show with the same name.

Vanderstigchel previously worked in the restaurant business downstate, including at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, but he always hoped to have a place of his own in Saratoga.

“I was determined to move up here and open up a restaurant,” Vanderstigchel said.

He took a leap and opened Brasserie Benelux in 2021, amid changing pandemic conditions and guidelines. The restaurant, which once housed Circus Cafe and Braeburn Tavern, was redesigned with decor reminiscent of the Central European cultures the food is inspired by. The name — Brasserie, meaning a brewery, and Benelux, a portmanteau of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg — is meant to signal an unpretentious and lively eatery that knows its beer.

Vanderstigchel runs the eatery with his wife Tatiana, who is from Poland and Belarus and has helped bring more than a dozen Ukrainian refugees on staff.

“We also support the Ukrainian community. We’ve helped a lot of people get on their feet that just came to the country, giving them jobs here and it fits into the European concept. We speak many languages here,” Vanderstigchel said.

The Gazette recently caught up with Vanderstigchel about his culinary roots and what Brasserie Benelux brings to the Saratoga restaurant scene.

Q: What made you interested in the restaurant business?

A: I was born in Chicago to Dutch immigrants who moved back when I was 8 years old. So I grew up in the Netherlands. My mother and grandmother were great cooks and I grew up around food being made at home from scratch, and [I was brought along] with my parents or my grandparents to the markets, because at that time in Europe and still, it’s very farm to table. And for every particular component of making a meal, there was a specialty shop. You went to the meat shop, to the produce guy, the cheese guy, the dairy guy.

It was very educational and I think that’s important if you want to be a good chef or cook, to have early palate training.

Q: Can you talk me through how you came up with the menu?

A: Saratoga has a lot of great restaurants. I was already a fan of restaurants up there but I really wanted to do something that was a contribution from my roots being Dutch.

Having worked at Belgian restaurants and French restaurants, I wanted to focus on beer-producing countries in Central Europe and the foods that go along with it. I wanted to create a Euro tour for people to come here and say, “You know what, I want a mussel pot from Belgium, I want Jaeger schnitzel from Germany. I want wiener schnitzel from Austria. I want Swedish meatballs from Scandinavia, I want a kielbasa platter from Poland, an apple strudel from Austria, and then the beers to go along with it.” We have a very fine selection of unique beers from Belgium, Germany, and other European countries.

We get a lot of people that come in and say “I was stationed in the military in Germany, your food is right on the money.” In the summer, we get a lot of folks from Eastern Europe, from the Baltic countries that are very excited that we’re here. They like our potato pancakes and smoked salmon and many of the dishes from Europe. This way we appeal to a larger audience and we’re an educational institution on Central European cuisine and beer. Of course, we have wines and local beers on tap and local ciders.

Q: Over the years, what have become your most popular dishes?

A: The schnitzels are very popular. The apple strudel, the crepes we make here. The potato pancakes, people love them. Potato pancakes, if you think about it, everybody in Europe has their own version. It’s a very popular dish in all communities.

Q: What has changed about the restaurants since you first opened?

A: One thing about Saratoga, the summer you get a lot of people and a lot of impulse traffic. But you have to build your business off-season with locals. So we really focused on building up a good local reputation.

We’ve made improvements, wherever it was needed. We bought brand new chairs from France, which we didn’t have in the beginning because we were working on a budget. We have good reviews and been moving forward steadily.

Q: How would you describe the atmosphere on a typical Friday or Saturday night?

A: What people like about this place is the service. The service is very friendly. People are really treated like family and because we’re a big restaurant, we don’t rush people out. They can relax here and it’s a friendly place. It’s not loud and rowdy.

Q: What is the typical cost of a dinner?

A: On average, it’s $50-60 a person. Off-season and on Tuesdays, we do a prime rib dinner, which is $24.95 and this is to support the local folks. And then, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, we do a customer appreciation night where we offer $20 bottles of wine and a three-course meal for $22.

Q: Are you already booked up for Belmont?

A: Yes. We’re really booked on Friday and Saturday of course, but Wednesday there’s going to be a Blues Traveler concert and we’re [thinking] it’s going to be like the Victorian Streetwalk. There’s going to be thousands of people on the street and they’re going to walk inside so the place will fill up. That’s kind of what happens in Saratoga.

Just like two weeks ago on a Sunday night, there was a sold-out concert at SPAC and the reservations were good but the place was packed all day with people walking in.

With Saratoga, you have to be prepared for the unexpected, right? Is there a concert in town? Is there a convention? We have very good staff that are multi-talented so we can go from zero to 100.

Q: Are you typically working behind the scenes or up front with customers?

A: I always apologize to regulars, “Sorry, I was stuck in the kitchen.” What I mean by that is that we are hands-on owners and I am in the kitchen, on the line working. I’m making sure that every meal is perfect and there is no guessing game. If I can’t be here, I close the restaurant. Me and my wife are involved with everything.

Q: Is there anything else you want people to know about the restaurant?

A: We are one of the more unique restaurants in Saratoga, that offer food that’s hard to find these days. And that’s mostly because not everybody knows how to cook this particular food. You have to grow up with it and know what’s going on.

Even though we’re on Broadway, compared to other restaurants that have more frontage, we’re a very big restaurant. We can seat 135 people and we have a beautiful private room in the back we call the Saratoga Room. What differentiates us from other places that do catering is that our food is really fresh and made from scratch. It’s not a commercial-tasting food.

Brasserie Benelux is located at 390 Broadway, Saratoga Springs. For more information visit beneluxny.com.