Pasta in Belval, for every kind of day

Every group lunch has the same five minutes. Someone asks where, everyone says they don’t mind, and it goes round in circles until somebody types one word.

Pasta?

And that’s it, settled. I’ve never seen anyone say no. I’ve stopped trying to work out why.

World Pasta Day is tomorrow, Sunday 25 October, which is a slightly awkward choice of day, because most of the pasta in Belval keeps office hours. So this is really for the week ahead, with a word about Sunday at the end. The clocks go back tonight too, so you have an extra hour to think about it.

There are seven places, and what I like is that they hardly compete. Each one belongs to a different kind of day.

The day with no time in it

Some days lunch is something you squeeze between two other things. For those, Belval Plaza has two counters.

Pasta4You, in the Plaza’s North Gallery, hands your pasta over in a lunchbox. It’s cooked to order, the choice is short and simple, and on a busy day that’s a small kindness: nobody wants to stand at a counter deliberating with a meeting at two. Take it back to your desk, or if the day allows it, sit on the terrace it shares with Athena Cafe.

Maestri della Pasta began in Luxembourg with an Apecar, one of those little three-wheeled Italian vans, as its first kitchen. The Belval counter is upstairs on the Op d’Mezzanine level, and here you build lunch yourself: the shape first, then the sauce, cooked to order. It’s quick too, with a little more deciding. Students get 10% off with their card, and with the European Youth Card, 12 € of pasta comes with a soft drink on the house.

The day lunch is the best hour

Then there are the days when lunch is the part you were looking forward to, and you want to sit down for it.

Bistrot V’diterraneo cooks one dish a day, Monday to Friday, at 14.90 €, and more often than not it’s pasta. It’s Neapolitan in spirit and sits right under the blast furnaces on Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux. Last week was penne all’amatriciana on Monday, pipe rigate with sausage and mushrooms on Wednesday, and linguine with scampi to see the week out. You only find out what’s cooking when the day’s menu comes out, which I’ve come to enjoy. The pasta is properly good, and of all the menus I gather each week, it’s the kindest on the wallet for a sit-down plate.

Nonna Nenetta 2.0 is named after a real grandmother, Nenetta, and the pasta is handmade. On weekday lunchtimes there’s a pasta of the day, usually 15 €. Last week it was rigatoni with a duck and orange ragout. Two of us went in August for a catch-up that was also a meeting, and I had the spaghetti aux moules à la tarentine. We had a proper list of things to get through, and neither of us said a word for the first few minutes. Pasta does that to an agenda.

MyCaffé, on Rue de la Fonte at the Maison du Savoir, changes its pasta every week. This coming week it’s tagliolino with pleurotus mushrooms and cherry tomatoes on a potato cream, pacchero with courgette cream and prawns, and ravioli filled with braised beef, between 22.80 and 23.90 €. The pasta is good, and if you’re on campus every day, Monday’s new list is a small thing to look forward to. The weekly menu runs Monday to Friday.

The evening

L’Osteria Belval is known for pizzas that arrive bigger than the plate, which is reason enough to go with friends. The menu goes well beyond them, though, with pasta and more worked dishes. It’s on Avenue du Rock’n’Roll, a few doors from Rockhal, so it’s an easy dinner before a concert. For a group, book ahead. It’s open every day until 23:00.

And Nonna Nenetta 2.0 opens again in the evenings, Monday to Saturday from 18:30, for when one pasta lunch in a week wasn’t enough.

Duca & Friends is downstairs in Belval Plaza II, an Italian table worth booking, for lunch or dinner, Monday to Saturday. The pasta is good and there’s a terrace. The chef’s suggestions change, and they tend to appear on the restaurant’s social media rather than on the menu, so have a look there before you book.

And tomorrow?

If you’d like to mark World Pasta Day on the day itself, L’Osteria is the safe bet: it opens on Sundays as a rule, from 12:00. Belval Plaza is open from 10:00 to 18:00 for Mantelsonndeg, but a centre opening doesn’t set every counter’s hours, so check Maestri and Pasta4You before you set off. Bistrot V’diterraneo, Nonna Nenetta 2.0, MyCaffé and Duca & Friends are closed on Sundays.

Which leaves Monday. Pasta on a Monday might be the better celebration anyway.

The seven at a glance

Place	For	When	Price
Pasta4You	A lunchbox between two things	Monday to Saturday	Not published
Maestri della Pasta	Pasta your way, quickly	Monday to Saturday	€€
Bistrot V’diterraneo	One dish a day, often pasta	Weekday lunch	14.90 €
Nonna Nenetta 2.0	Handmade pasta, lunch and dinner	Monday to Saturday	Usually 15 € at lunch
MyCaffé	New pasta every week, by campus	Monday to Friday for the weekly menu	22.80 to 23.90 € this week
L’Osteria Belval	Dinner with friends, and Sundays	Every day	Not published
Duca & Friends	Italian, lunch or dinner, with a terrace	Monday to Saturday	€€

Every lunch menu in Belval this week is on the homepage, and the Pasta page keeps the full list.

So tell me: which plate of pasta do you keep going back for, and who do you go with?

Take Care ☀️

Where it happens

The 9 places in this story, on the map of Belval.