If you lived in NYC, you would. 
I’m no great expert in Belgian cuisine, but I think all of their entrees are very common dishes you could find in any bistro/casual family restaurant there. A couple of photos will show you we’re hardly talking high-end here:
Bless your heart. I have lived in New York City my whole life.
As suspected you and I have very different ideas of what a dive is. That is pretty far from a dive-- especially for NYC. You should visit the city some time.
I understand your p.o.v. to be exactly what I expected.
This is roughly our situation in Asheville, NC, although there has been a steady climb in prices that seems to take it at least 10% higher than what you cite. We usually get two entrees and a split appetizer is optional. Maybe two drinks each but with one being a cheaper beer or wine. Dessert sometimes. I feel like $130-150 pre tax and tip is no longer the splurge it once was – nor does it guarantee good cooking.
LoL, I was going to comment - “he works in Manhattan”.
But still, be gentle with the misunderstandings of others. Not that I am not guilty of doing the opposite myself, sometimes.
Gorgeous Vespa 
Yeah, the tone here could use a bit more chill, a lil less combativeness 
and this is for band/crew only. one time the spouses of the band was there and the guitarist wife’s bill alone was over $150 pre tax/tip. that’s about the time the band cooler in the van became a thingie.
Yeah, it’s not a +1 deal here, either.
Actually, I’m a she, and I work from home in Westchester now. But I lived in Queens for 15+ years, so I know whereof I speak.
Clearly we do have different ideas of what a dive is, especially for NYC. But if you live here, you shouldn’t be AT ALL shocked at the prices people are discussing on this thread, so… 
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Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens… Boston - us peeps originating from Chicagoland lump y’alls all together. It’s not like we know the area!
Apologies on the misgendering, too.
I used to visit Belgium fairly often because of my interest in the Great War. We stayed in Ieper, where several restaurants on the market square offer Carbonade Flamande (Vlaams Stoofvleese in the Flemish dialect of Dutch). Served with fries and salad, it’s priced at about €24 ($27) - so cheaper than the Manhatten place’s menu price, although Belgian tax will be included and tips are not required
I see from the photo of the exterior that they do shrimp croquettes. Perhaps my favourite Belgian dish - if done right, without skimping on the shrimps. I wonder if they use the traditional brown/grey North Sea shrimp, rather than the larger, more common, prawns.
BXL is really not a dive. Not fancy by any means, but far from a dive.
Always mean to go for AYCE mussels sometime, but a couple of decades later, still haven’t made it there on the right day, lol.
(Love it btw.)
BF and I don’t go into Boston proper all that often anymore and tend to stick to delivery here in Waltham (about 10 miles west). A lot of sandwiches and entrees, before delivery, seem to run in the $14-$28 dollar range (including, sometimes, a side), with offerings from the sub shop type places $10-$16 (no side, some toppings extra). That’s before delivery charges and all that garbage.
For those occasions we go out…our favorite local sushi place ranges for entrees for around $26 for a “sushi entree” (7 nigiri, a roll, and a salad) to $226/person when we went for omakase last weekend (4 drinks included, I think it was 10 nigiri and 2 cooked items. Nigiri included kin madai, otoro, wagyu, and foie, plus some live scallop and botan ebi.). For going out to a bar, we are somewhere between $80-$100/person. A lot of that is drinks. The steakhouses around here seems to charge similar to what I’ve seen some other city based posters put up as numbers. There can be relative “bargains”; I think the steak frites at one place we go to is $38. It’s skirt steak.
When I am going out at this point, I feel like I am mostly paying for good to great service and maybe some better than average beverages than I have at home. Most of the food is going to be about what I can do at home (sushi aside), although the yakitori place I like has binchotan and grills inside and I can’t do that, so I’m happy to go there.
So, in summary, I am ok paying those prices. I get treated well at the places we go and don’t have to do dishes. Sometimes I even learn something about ingredients (looking at you kizami wasabi from last weekend!).
I agree, it’s not a dive - it’s one step up in my estimation, as I said before. Dimly lit, noisy, sticky floors, questionable bathroom, big group of rowdy sports fans pounding beers at the bar. At least that was the vibe the night I was there. I guess this begs the question of how one defines a dive and the various steps up?
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This is a dive https://ny.eater.com/2011/7/22/6667705/exclusive-a-final-look-inside-the-legendary-mars-bar
I say it every time: if my PIC and I were teetotalers, our bills would be 50% cheaper.
Yeah, but where is the fun in that?!
