Hunched over tables in interiors with stained glass and brass angels holding lamps, a peculiar blend of living room intimacy and the detached reverence of the place of worship, the great and good of Waffle Central grey visibly as they sip their cherry-flavoured beers, nicotine-darkened walls now smoke-free, small dogs quivering at their feet, poised to dart out and nip the waiter’s ankle in frustration (instinctively aware of the impunity granted by their child-substitute status, the social and commercial imperative to defer to the big-bosomed, multi-corseted mistress in her creaking finery banishing all other considerations, the most formidable retribution the yapping miscreant need fear a yank on the leash and a scolding). Each brew is served in its own unique glass, accompanied by a tiny bowl of salted nibbles, sörkorcsolya as such an offering is known in Hungarian (beer skates, something to help the liquid slip down even more smoothly), usually dainty pretzels and Twiglet-equivalents. The menu comprises snacks that aggravate hunger instead of soothing it, white-bread toast with a slice of ham and cheese, a lettuce leaf kept artificially crisp, miniature gherkins and pickled onions in that most strident of clear vinegars, which could function as a paint-stripper or hospital corridor disinfectant with equal efficacy.

Several years ago, my friend Dorrit commented approvingly on the custom of placing an individually-wrapped biscuit on the saucer next to the coffee, a pampering of the customer she hoped could be exported to her native land. The quality of the token varies in direct proportion with the sumptuousness of the surroundings (if you visit Wittamer’s café, for example, to take pleasure in demolishing the carefully hand-crafted cakes with their extravagant swirls of pure cocoa butter chocolate you can also expect to be presented with a small plate of truffles with your pot of tea, though the bill matches the polite reception and attention to detail). One biscuit stands out as pre-eminent, however, having attained the status of national icon, the Speculoos. Numbed with the fatigue of a night made restless by the knowledge that I would have to wake up at five in order to make the connection (and that my working day would not end before midnight after the trip), the crisp, slightly cinnamon-flavoured sliver of comfort revived me once I had removed the plastic filter through which the scalding water had already passed (in the days when the buffet car and the trolley service on board the train had not been abolished to staunch the losses, I signed the protest petition and was left to mutter resentfully along with all the other regulars on the route, the ten-minute stopover in Luxembourg main station hardly adequate for procuring warm liquid refreshment when several hundred other caffeine addicts feel the urge at exactly the same time in a mass dash, choreographed by desperation in a display that would put the otherwise breathtaking aerobatics of sky-blackening starling flocks to shame).

The flavour of the Speculoos is singularly appropriate to its context of net curtains, tall city houses, unremitting respectability (the neighbour below when I first moved here made my life a misery by banging up every time my baby wailed with colic, accusing me of child abuse because no infant makes such a racket unless it is being systematically tortured and sending the concierge around if I had the temerity to speak to my parents on the phone after ten in the evening, the cut-off point for noise of any description – at the weekend woe betide the suburbanite who dares mow the lawn on a Sunday, there are helicopter patrols that check for such heinous crimes as well as illegal bonfires on the Day of Rest), sickly, sugary guilt to banish the burden of unimpeachable conduct, of sitting knees sternly and uninvitingly clamped together because any other posture would mark you out as being of questionable virtue, of the rain-drenched drabness, which is the natural hue. A hint of spice, of exoticism, of escape, but nothing too adventurous, nothing that would make you question why you were still here, why you put up with it all. A fragrance of rebellion, of subversion, yet paradoxically also of cocooning, retreat to the parlour and convention, a tumult of contradictions and hypocrisies melting on the tongue. An immature taste, forever soothing in its childish immediacy.

Responding to the endless appetite for innovation and confident that we have all been adequately trained to succumb to the impulse buy at least once, the makers of Speculoos have devised a fresh aberration. In Britain, it would send the anti-obesity killjoys into self-anointing paroxysms of righteous indignation, eyes rolling, foaming at the impudent and unapologetic obscenity of it. A spreadable biscuit paste! Speculoos concentrate to trowel on to the morning roll, to alleviate the constant, throbbing pain of a transitional period stretching endlessly onwards through a thousand rainy afternoons cleaning up after the neighbour’s pug as it leaves a not-so-pleasantly-odoured deposit in the lavender patch. At least stripy Milky Way possesses some justification, the logic of sticky fingers in the summer sunshine.

Having dispatched the Hungarian to the local supermarket to obtain a sample purely as a nod to the possibility of a less onerous form of cultural assimilation, I unscrewed the lid, pierced the waxy, hymen-like seal with my knife and plunged the blade in. Regret can only sometimes be anticipated, and always vaguely, as acknowledgement in advance would lour like a bouncer leaning against the entrance, sniffing the pheromones of the nervous. To have discovered, after all these years, something to like about this miserable, petit bourgeois cesspit, the chief virtue of which up to the moment when the evil concoction assaulted my taste buds was the ease with which you could quit its confines (no more than a couple of hours in any direction).

Whatever next? Squirting mayonnaise over my chips instead of ketchup?