Les 4 Saisons

Salt, pepper, and the first choice

The roast duck foie gras arrives with asparagus, lemon gel and wild garlic, and that dish gives Les 4 Saisons in Marche-en-Famenne its scale. Pascal Nisette has been executive chef here since he and his wife took the house over in May 2022, and he comes from a long family of restaurateurs, having led L’Ermitage and Bistrot des Saveurs in Houffalize before this. His rating stands at 13 out of 20 from Gault&Millau, and the takeover preserved the restaurant’s Michelin Bib Gourmand rather than resetting it. The register is tradition and creativity held together with precision, which is a narrow brief: selection first, treatment second, seasoning last. The gesture is small. The consequence is not.

A seasonal kitchen with a foie gras center

The kitchen at Les 4 Saisons works in a Modern Belgian-French bistro register, with set menus and à la carte choices moving around local produce. Within that structure, the foie gras gives the place a point of discipline. The meal opens with amuse-bouches that set the same tone: cake aux lardons, a croquette de jambonneau, a crémeux de chou-fleur with fish roe, a bouchée of hand-cut beef tartare. Around them the menu carries a consistent preference for product and sauce: the roast duck foie gras with asparagus, lemon gel and wild garlic; lieu jaune snacké with sauce homardine and a fondue de romaine; a mousseux de tiramisu with coffee ice cream to close. The house also holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which suits the cooking better as a measure than as decoration. Generosity matters here, but so does control. The plate has to arrive warm, clear, and complete, without losing the quiet edge of the ingredient that began it.

Stone walls, a quiet pass, garden light

The room sits in a stone building in Waha, within Marche-en-Famenne, with warm modern decor and small-house intimacy rather than spectacle. Service moves in an upscale casual rhythm, close enough to the pass for the kitchen’s pace to register, but quiet enough that the plate keeps its own authority. Outside, the Japanese-style garden terrace changes the light around the meal; inside, the stone and wood hold the room steady. This matters for the cooking. Foie gras can be made heavy by the wrong setting, too ceremonial by the wrong room. Here it belongs to a sequence of seasonal Belgian cooking, with local sourcing, a curated wine program, and a counterpoint of garden air beyond the glass. The place does not need to perform rusticity. Waha does enough of that work.

Where the craft stays useful

The 2022 renovation says as much as any dish. It turned the stone house’s small intimate rooms into an elegant, convivial space without erasing the Ardennes character that patrons had known for a quarter of a century. That balance keeps the restaurant from becoming precious about its own refinement. The same discipline runs through the roast foie gras with asparagus and the lieu jaune with sauce homardine at Les 4 Saisons.