Top Chef Season 10 contestant and owner/Chef of DC’s own Belga Café lunches with us for his thoughts on the DC food scene, where he thinks it’s trending, and wonders if DC is ready for Michelin stars. Walking down the restaurant and bar lined Barrack’s Row neighborhood of Capitol Hill, I see many familiar haunts that serve cold beer, and I am sure, decent food. Yet I am comforted with each step I take as it brings me closer to Belga Café. Opened in 2004 by Chef Bart, this place has been consistently cranking out some seriously delicious Belgian-inspired food, providing amazing mussels, and some of the all-around best dishes (and beers) to be found in The District. However, it’s not Chef Bart’s entertaining and hilariously hard-to-understand-sometimes performance on Top Chef Season 10 that brings me here…ok, well, it sort of is. I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to have lunch with this guy. He’s always happy, he had a crazy ass partner Josie in the last challenge that resulted in his elimination (tear), oh yeah, and there’s mussel’s on the half-shell with garlic butter and an ice cold Kasteel Rouge waiting for me on the inside. Onward we march in the name of food journalism!