Like pink blossom, the advent of Spring after two years of Covid restrictions has brought Brussels back into its bars and restaurants as if nothing happened.
But while relieved customers were again spending this curiosity Easter-Ramadan-Passover-Full-Moon, the legacy of the pandemic remains severe for a 'Horeca' industry largely brought to its knees.
Structurally high inflation triggered by billions borrowed by the State to fund furlough was bad enough, and now the war in Ukraine has pushed energy and basic foodstuffs prices ever higher.
To that, add mounting wage demands in a Belgium where automatic salary indexation threatens to create a vicious spiral - up for costs, down in terms of real spending power.
They think it's all 'Hoover'
Covid, as surreptitiously as re-fried rice, also accelerated a digital revolution; maybe not yet as obviously dramatic as the industrial or agricultural epoch shifts of before, but just as the tractor drove out the horse, and the conveyor belt strangled the sweat-shop, equally heartlessly when it comes to staffing perspectives.
Newspapers (this one, included) used to be printed on paper; reporters called-in facts to copytakers who had heard it all before and would cut you off far more wittily and brutally than any analytics software.
Waiters, meanwhile, used to wear their waistcoats with pride, keeping their customers' secrets the way good journalists still trade the shareable against the known interest.
But after the Covid landslide, on top of the tax closure of the black economy margin that characterised the trade, and the collapsed tips that distinguished its artisans like Press expenses, thousands of Hotel, Restaurant and Catering vacancies remain unfilled.
Enter the robot
It's Friday 6 o'clock in Ottignies. In a municipality of 100,000 people, we are headed for 'Nagoya', a Japanese-themed restaurant in an old auto dealership run by a Chinese-origin former tour chef for Belgian tennis champion Justine Henin.
Unlike empty surrounding apero counters, we are not alone - Mum, Dad and four kids; Mum, Dad and three; Mum, Dad and two; Mum, Dad and four. In they stream, every table filling up fast.
We're here to meet today's Belgian Horeca equivalent of Star Wars' CP3U or R2D2. They call it 'Peanut'.
The kids in this well-to-do, semi-rural part of the Belgian capital commuter belt can't get enough of the dry-ice-spewing machine delivering the exact-same, sweet-and-sour, democratically-priced duck, beef and satisfying shrimp.
Co-waitress Jessica still takes the order here - the market has all manner of models, but a basic, speechless robot waiter bought new or on a leasing contract is cheaper than a minimum, 11-hours-per-week commis de salle contract buttressed by Belgian communal unemployment benefit 'complement'.
I ask Jessica if it's the boys or the girls who are losing out in the jobs stakes?
"Obviously, the boys," she chuckles. "They already don't want to work in this business."
The question was consciously abstruse.
'Blade Runner'
Christophe Martin has a decade's experience as Maitre d'Hotel in Brussels institutions from Canal to Ixelles Etangs. Today, putting his own, new post-Covid Horeca business projects in place, he is unimpressed.
"It's just a gadget to attract kids and families -- barely even a 'runner'," he says scornfully.
"Until the robotics industry comes up with the Horeca equivalent of 'Blade Runner', I think human life in the sector goes on.
"I wouldn't panic as things stand - from what I've seen of what is currently on the robot market in our sector, it's not much more meaningful than the 'dumb waiter'.
"And even when they get closer to the 'replicant' idea - people still go out to eat, drink or dance for more than just the food, wine or music," he maintains, adding with a nervous grin, "hopefully".
Deliberately cavalier, the arrival of the 'robot waiter' into media consciousness is nevertheless provoking deep irritation among industry leaders.
Cold McDonald's
Board member and past president of the Horeca federation across Wallonia, Thierry Neyens counts two decades as owner of an Arlon hotel by the duty-free border with tax-haven Luxembourg.
"This is hardly the time to be talking about robot waiters," he snaps.
"What matters for our business is the Covid lockdown, mounting costs for energy and basic foodstuffs - and now the imposition of expensive investment in ventilation," he said, referring to the addition of Las Vegas-level, Covid-compliant air-conditioning regulation.
"[The robot waiter] may make sense for the McDonalds of this world, but away from the multi-national parts of the sector, it's about dialogue, about exchange, contact... The human dimension," he insisted.
Final furlough
Anais Soree is the time-served spokeswoman for Actiris, the Belgian State employment agency. "I actually saw a robot waiter for the first time at Christmas up in Aberdeen, Scotland -- actually placing food at diners' tables," she said, admitting a profound uncertainty as to her feelings, knowing full well the Horeca sector was one of the hardest hit of all during the Covid pandemic.
"There were about 11,000 (Horeca) workers just in Brussels' placed on furlough during lockdown," she sighed.
The data she sees every day tells its own story.
Just as the best kitchens whip real mayonnaise morning and evening, certainly the more expensive robots are getting better and fast.
High-end architects specializing in modern hospitality facilities, from Tokyo to Antwerp, are just as likely these days to factor in robotic circulation as disabled access when it comes to their interior design specifications.
Aye, Mbote
In shaping its future Horeca space, Brussels has a somewhat restricted canvas compared to post-industrial pioneers like Cleveland or Glasgow with their long-established transformations of dilapidated courthouses or cathedrals into citadels of consumption.
The traditionally narrow outline of much Brussels building and deed ownership means the city's Horeca footprint remains dominated by small spaces. Convivial, 'non peut-etre', but all too often driven by problems similarly old and specific.
One of the smallest, and most iconic, is the 'Callebasse' in the heart of Matonge, Congolese Rue Dublin - for more than 40 years owned and run by the doyenne of Brussels' old African quarter.
"A robot waitress?" 'Mamita' Monique laughs. "I'm all for that - as long as you can guarantee it won't steal from the till, sleep-in hungover or ruin your most important clients' marriages!"
