Café de Hanekeef

Photos and words by Cliff Lucas.
Edited by Breandán Kearney.

Café Society is a photographic series which celebrates the spaces at the heart of Belgian beer culture. See more here.

When 1990s Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene last visited Café de Hanekeef in Mechelen, he gifted them an enamel sign from French brewery Brasserie du Coq Hardi. It was a fitting gift—both the Prime Minister’s surname and the brewery’s name translate to “the rooster”. The plaque, depicting a powerful chicken standing atop a barrel, rests above the only tap in Mechelen serving Antwerp-based Brouwerij De Koninck’s Bolleke. There are photos of chickens in the back of the café from the “Cosmopolitan Chicken Project”, a genetic experiment in which Koen Vanmechelen has cross-bred 18 generations of roosters and hens from as many nations. Café de Hanekeef is the oldest brown bar in Mechelen, open 365 days of the year. It is located just down the street from the Mechelen Veemarkt, where sales of live roosters were popular until the late 1800s. To assist in carrying the animals after a sale, they were sold with rooster baskets (“hanekeef” in Dutch) that were stored in what is now the café’s building. The buyer and seller of the rooster often celebrated the transaction with a shot of gin. When Mechelen finally banned the sale of live animals, the owners of the building began selling the leftover stock of gin, so in 1886, Café de Hanekeef took flight.