My husband and I will every once in a while (particularly when we’re feeling a little hungry) watch shows like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives or Man vs. Food and we have tried to go to as many of the restaurants shown on the shows as we can find on our travels to different cities across the country.

My ultimate favorite one of these restaurants featured on these shows would have to be Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis, Missouri. My husband and I LOVE barbeque and this place is seriously the best in the world! We saw this place featured on Man vs. Food and it definitely lives up to the hype. They have the best ribs ever!

Anyway, when we lived in Utah we went to a couple of the restaurants featured on these shows and our favorite one by far was a tiny little place in downtown Salt Lake called Bruge’s Waffles and Frites. It is an extremely tiny café with minimal seating, but keep in mind there is additional seating on the roof, you just have to let them know. Anyway, they pretty much just serve delicious vanilla Belgian waffles, with your choice of toppings; different kinds of fresh berries, chocolate sauce, crème.

They also serve frites, which are fries that are made with a special kind of potato and fried twice for an amazing, authentic texture and you can choose from about 10 different homemade sauces to dip them in.

And they serve only one sandwich called the machine gun sandwich which is lamb sausage on a French roll, topped with frites and a delicious sauce. It is a very simple place but I think about it and crave it all the time! We try to stop in there every time we visit and I am so excited to learn that they are opening another location in Draper, Utah soon, so if you live in the Salt Lake area, you have GOT to try this place, whether it is downtown right now, or you could wait a couple months for it to be open in Draper.

So now fast-forward to now when I live in California and cannot get the goodness of those sweet vanilla Belgian waffles at all :( What am I supposed to do when I get a hankering for these delectable delights? Why, try to find the closest thing to it that I can make myself, of course! And find it I did (at least as close to it as I can remember how they tasted). I found this really authentic Belgian waffle recipe from tasteofhome.com.

The description the author wrote says: “It was on a visit to my husband’s relatives in Belgium that I was given this recipe. Back in the U.S., I served the waffles to his Belgian-born grandmother. She said they tasted just like home. Our grandkids love these waffles with any kind of topping: blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, fried apples, powdered sugar or whipped topping—Rose Delemeester, St. Charles, Michigan”

With that and the rave reviews they got I had to give them a try. They are quite sweet, which is perfect for me, but maybe you could cut back on the sugar if you wouldn’t care for them to be so sweet. I put a big mound of sliced strawberries on top, dusted them with powdered sugar, then put a big dollop of homemade whipped cream on top. They were divine! I hope you love them as much as I do.

TRUE BELGIAN WAFFLES

Ingredients

Directions

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