'Botanical by Alfonse' on Becoming a Homegrown Success Story

©  Fanny Myard

From a bar on wheels and Lidl sous vides, to being the shining light of Belgium’s cocktail scene, Botanical by Alfonse has been on quite the journey. Millie Milliken talks to husband-and-wife owners Charlie Guilliams and Valentin Norberg on making cocktail magic with the flavours found around them

When Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Guilliams met Valentin Norberg 10 years ago, it was what might be described as a personal and professional ‘meet-cute’. “We started to date each other and we’re thinking about what we want to do in our future, and I said: ‘It’s a bit silly, but I always thought I’d like to have a bar,” explains Guilliams. “A place where we can share a cider and have a good time, like a pub.’ Valentin was laughing and I asked him, ‘Why do you laugh?’ He said: ‘My dream is to have a bar too.’”

Fast forward a decade and the couple helm Botanical by Alfonse in Belgium’s Namur – a genre-defying bar for the famous beer country, where cocktails are not normally the order of the day. Celebrating local and seasonal produce, and operating in a space that aesthetically matches the ethos of their drinks, the Botanical by Alfonse team have built a reputation for themselves in recent years, sitting on The World’s 50 Best Bars Discovery list very comfortably indeed.

It hasn’t been plain sailing though and the beginning days of building their dream Guilliams explains, came with some setbacks. “We did the business plan, and we went to see banks, and they just laughed at us, saying: ‘You're so young, you have no money, no legacy, so you will never have your own bar. So good luck. There is the door.’” They say necessity is the mother of invention, however, and Norberg had an idea. He took the €500 they did have, bought a caravan, and brought it back to their little apartment. They called it Alfonse. “Do you still want a bar?” he asked Guilliams. Reader: she said yes. 

©  Fanny Myard

Sowing the seed

Norberg’s upbringing has had a direct impact on the way that Botanical by Alfonse’s cocktails are created. Having grown up in the countryside, he was never raised on McDonalds or frozen pizza, but foods from the land. He began interrogating why things were made from certain ingredients and how to be sure that they were producing good quality drinks – with no reference point being so isolated from the cocktail industry, the main influence was the produce around them.

Norberg began learning a little bit about the classics online and in books, and putting his own twist on them. Some cocktail competitions followed – which he won – and the cocktail world outside of their oasis in Belgium began to take notice: a reputation for pioneering this type of cocktail making was born.

It was in fact one of these competitions that was a catalyst for them moving from wheels to bricks-and-mortar, when one of the stipulations was that you had to own a bar to enter. They lied (kind of) – sure, they had Alfonse, but they really needed somewhere permanent, and so the hunt began. With little money and no plans on getting a loan from the bank they were looking for something cheap and disused, and stumbled across a building at Rue de Brasseurs 46 which is now home to Botanical by Alfonse. Seven months and 42 truckloads of rubbish later, and in 2018, they opened.

Having the support of their local clientele at the beginning took a little bit of adjusting to, Guilliams explains. “It was kind of hard for some they really appreciate it. They saw us as nice young couple with lots of energy who they wanted to support and try our drinks. But they wanted a beer or a CocaCola – they didn’t quite understand.” Three months after opening however, they won the Gault&Millau award for 2019 Cocktail Bar of the Year and it gave them the boost they needed. “Locals didn't mind if they like cocktails or not, because they trust Gault&Millau so much so if they say we’re good, they’re going to go.”

© Fanny Myard

Building the dream

The beginnings of the bar were small but capable. No lab, a simple cooking station and a sous vide from Lidl was the set up. “We didn't have any fancy bartender from London, from Paris or anything,” explains Norberg. “It was local people, people from the Belgian bar industry, people who are really interested in what we were doing.” Now, they have a rotovap, a centrifuge – a really nice lab to hone the techniques of their small but talented team.

They also had dreams of growing their own plants for the ingredients in their cocktails. “At the beginning we had the greenhouse beside the bar, so the plan was to grow some plants there, pick what we needed, and then replace the plants or putting them back in the garden,” explains Guilliams. “That was the dream. It didn't work. It worked for like two weeks. Every time we were picking stuff, the plants would die.”

Menus did change every four weeks but now rotate every two months to allow for the team to think creatively and use their ingredients to their full potential. They work with both a city garden (for daily ingredients like fig leaves and grapes) and a forest garden (“where all the treasures are”) to inspire their cocktails. The latter is run by Norberg’s mother, where anything from Szechuan peppers, to tomatoes and even huacatay (“she was growing it before anyone else”). There’s also a veg market, a local florist, and restaurants who they can utilise too.

It’s an ingredient-led mindset that seems to be being adopted more and more. “It makes sense working with seasonal ingredients that we really want to use,” explains Guilliams. “We want to be creative with what we have and sometimes you get more creative when you have just a few solutions, because you have to think way more.”