Tag: Belgium

City guide: Ghent (2024)

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If you’re here for the Edible Reading Bruges city guide, a brand new expanded and updated 2026 Bruges city guide is now available on the blog, and can be found here.

Back in the mists of time, in the prehistoric year that was 2018, Ghent was the first ever city guide I wrote. I went in a drizzly October week and, despite that, it completely won me over. It had gorgeous winding lanes and modern architecture, brown pubs and craft beer, excellent coffee, really cracking restaurants and street food, superlative baked goods and street art everywhere you looked. I loved it and I resolved to go back, although Covid conspired to prevent it for another four years.

When I went back I did it, as I always have since, as part of a two centre holiday with Bruges. It’s easily done: the two are less than half an hour apart by train. The problem was that the next time I wrote a city guide to Ghent, it shared the billing with Bruges, and I have been back to Bruges far more often since than I have to Ghent, despite loving the city. And over the years, with one thing or another, Ghent has increasingly felt like an afterthought. Which isn’t fair: it deserves more than that.

So this time round I have finally got rid of the uneasy cohabitation and separated them out. This guide covers my old friends and new discoveries from a very happy visit to Ghent in 2024 and the Bruges stuff – I’ll stop using the B word now – can be found elsewhere. When I visited Ghent in 2024 the thing that surprised me the most was that the secret seemed to be out. I wasn’t used to seeing crowds of tourists in Ghent, but on this occasion they seemed to be everywhere, and I thought that perhaps a city that had always flown under the radar was finally getting some recognition.

Quite right too. If you’re a photographer, it has some of the best buildings and architecture you can find – all the pretty stuff, but plenty of contrast too. You can do a street art tour of the city, using a map you get from the tourist office, and if you like this sort of thing – as I do – you can spend a very enjoyable few hours ambling and snapping. Ghent is a university city and, like many other great university cities – Montpellier, Bologna, even Oxford – that means it has a vibrancy, edge and lack of stuffiness that other, more conventionally beautiful cities might envy. Not naming any names.

Although I haven’t included the places from my 2018 guide, because I’ve not been back since, many of them are still alive, kicking and well worth a visit: spots like Oak for Michelin starred dining, Du Progres for unbeatable chateaubriand (Du Progres will never go out of fashion because it doesn’t care about being in fashion) or Himschoot for outrageously good pastries.

And although this guide might be small, don’t be deceived: it is mighty. I’ve had few meals as good on my travels as the one I had at Roots, only a handful of European cafés anywhere I’ve been were as enjoyable to sip and people watch in as Take Five Espresso. And two of the bars in this guide – Gitane and Django – are two of my favourite places to drink in twenty years of travelling Europe being an attempted flâneur, and eight years of writing about it. It really is a wonderful place, and saying this makes me want to go back sooner rather than later. On its own, not sharing the limelight next time.

1. Roots

Roots, sadly, closed at the start of July 2026. The owners are opening a new restaurant, Klaar, on Donkersteeg on 24th August.

Roots was one of my favourite finds of last month’s trip to Ghent, a small and exceptionally tasteful restaurant in the Patershol district, possibly the prettiest part of the city. It’s a really beautiful space, the staff speak the kind of English that made me ashamed of my nonexistent Dutch and the lunch menu, a crazy forty-five or fifty-nine Euros for three or four courses, is an utter bargain.

I loved everything I had on a beautiful fish-led menu to the point where it was difficult to single anything out. But a langoustine tartare served on little lozenges of toasted brioche, like an open sando, was simply terrific. So was deft and delicate sea bass with potatoes and a leaf called bulls blood, which was a new one on me. But even better was a precisely cooked piece of ling with whey, draped in lardo, crowned with broccoli and striped with an intense, deep sauce.

Throw in an exemplary cheeseboard and a dessert of pear, chocolate ganache, chicory and caramel and you have as good a lunch as I can remember in Belgium. The fact that the room is so gorgeous was just the icing on the cake, as was the presence of a very agreeable-looking courtyard for the summer months. When I go back I’ll have dinner there and do it properly, but it will have to go some to top this magnificent first impression.

Roots
Vrouwebroersstraat 5, Gent
https://rootsgent.be

2. Boris & Maurice

Boris & Maurice was the Ghent restaurant I expected to adore, but merely came away really liking. It’s in Sint Amandsberg, a suburb out to the east a short bus hop away, in an area which is resolutely for locals and not tourists. In case you’re wondering, that’s a good thing: I loved the fact that the wait staff told us they didn’t have any English language menus, not realising that if anything that was a draw rather than a disincentive.

It is – as seems par for the course with Ghent restaurants – an impossibly stylish place full of impossibly stylish people, and if we got the least appealing table, nearest to the door, it merely proved to me that they had no intention of lowering their standards. Fair play to them for that. The restaurant has connections to a place, now long closed, called Bodo that I ate at and loved in 2018, and the menu is every bit as tempting as Bodo’s was: not masses of options, just a handful of snacks, three starters, mains and desserts and a cheeseboard to choose from.

Much of what I had was gorgeous, from bone marrow with gremolata and sourdough toast to a veal tartare with anchovy tapenade and capers, all the way through to a spot-on onglet with béarnaise, frites and something which was referred to as “spicy salad” (it wasn’t, really). All that makes the menu sound very robust and meat focused, which is unfair to the place because there was also white asparagus, hake with brandade, sea bass carpaccio with fennel vinaigrette. I just wasn’t in that mood when I went there, so I can’t tell you about those.

What I can say is that my dessert – rhubarb on crushed sablé Breton, punctuated with citrus and moated with crème anglaise, an upside-down crumble – was one of the nicest things I ate all week, and a dish I thought about a fair few times the next day. Other than that I found Boris & Maurice more amiable than exceptional, but I’d still go back. Especially because, as you’ll see shortly, it’s a brief walk from the most amazing bar.

Boris & Maurice
Antwerpsesteenweg 329, Gent
https://boris-maurice.be

3. Aperto Chiuso

Although Aperto Chiuso has been on my Ghent to do list for some time, I only finally managed to tick it off last month. It was open on Monday evenings, which many Ghent restaurants appear not to be, and the dining room was packed when we took our table at half seven. It’s on the beautifully named Sleepstraat, which is the road where Ghent stops being pretty and starts feeling gritty, and I’ve noticed it before because of the front half of a Fiat 500 gazing out of the window.

Inside the dining room is all dark muted tones – I love the picture of the Last Supper on one wall, looking down on the diners – and the menu looks a darned sight more authentic than many Italian restaurants you find both in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe. Interestingly it offers antipasti, starters and desserts yet all but one of the main courses were pasta dishes – almost no secondi here, and no pizza.

Everything we tried was utterly glorious, offering that comfort which Italian food brings quite unlike any other. It was a drizzly night, I felt a bit jaded after three consecutive evenings of boozing on Belgian beer, and Aperto Chiuso turned out to be exactly what I needed. Bruschetta came as little canapés topped with tomato and mozzarella, red pesto, anchovy butter. Burrata, so often derided in the U.K., was superb with blood orange, toasted hazelnuts and coriander seeds and an olive oil infused with lavender and honey.

And then my main course was the best spaghetti carbonara I’ve ever had – not a white creamy blob of blandness but a bundle of beautifully al dente, top quality pasta hugged by a a thick, mollifying sauce of egg, bacon, parmesan and nothing else. Honestly, it was as close to a panacea as I’ve ever found in a bowl, and when I’m in Ghent again I will eat it again. All that and a stonking house red for a ridiculous four Euros a glass: I wandered back down Sleepstraat well-fed, full of carbs and ready for a little sleep of my own.

Aperto Chiuso
Sleepstraat 82, Gent
https://apertochiuso.be

4. De Rechters

Still my favourite place in Ghent for traditional Belgian food, De Rechters is a contemporary-looking restaurant which is far better than it needs to be given its plum spot next to St Bavo’s Cathedral. When I visited in 2022, I got to sit outside in the sunshine and it made a good meal, if anything, even better. We drank Orval, and Zoë pointed out to me that her beer and mine were bottled on different days, which explained why mine was fizzier than hers: I love it when she goes full Raymond Babbitt about beer like that.

Never having had moules in Belgium – I know, such an oversight – I had some as a starter, cooked simply with thyme and they were plump and fragrant. But next time I’ll go the whole hog and have them as a main with garlic and cream, which for me is the only way really to eat moules, dipping your bread and frites into the sauce until you are truly replete.

The frites, incidentally, were a bit wan on that visit – which is a shame, because frites are something Belgium does better than practically anybody. But the stoverij, beer slow-cooked in beer until the whole thing is a symphony of dark brown, almost-sweet ambrosia, is worth the price of admission alone. You can get frites anywhere but beef like that requires patience and skill, both of which De Rechters has in abundance.

De Rechters
Sint-Baafsplein 23, Gent
https://derechters.be/nl/

5. STEK

STEK, in between the centre and Sint Pieters train station, is a lovely little cafe and a perfect spot for brunch, a meal which Ghent, in my experience, does better than Bruges. On a previous visit in the summer I sat out on their gorgeous terrace and enjoyed an exemplary avocado toast with crispy bacon, a splendid latte and a great dose of people watching.

This time around the less clement weather meant I could sample their indoors, a very tasteful space full of cool people and foliage – not necessarily in that order – and very friendly and attentive service. The coffee was as good as I recalled, the fresh lemonade with ginger was a sinus-tickling treat and the lunch game was, if anything, at a higher level than before. I had a potato salad with hot honey smoked salmon, caramelised onions, yoghurt dressing and pistachios which felt relatively virtuous while tasting a little sinful. I got there just before noon and grabbed pretty much the only table which wasn’t either occupied or reserved, so it might be making a lunch reservation online if you fancy giving STEK a go.

STEK
Nederkouter 129, Gent
https://www.stekgent.be

6. Take Five Espresso

I really loved Take Five when I visited Ghent in 2022, and on last month’s visit I was there every morning without fail for a latte, to sit inside at those big windows and enjoy what could feel like Ghent’s single biggest sun trap. The coffee is exceptional, the service is brilliant and they play effortlessly cool jazz – as you’d expect from the name – to soundtrack the start of your morning. The pain au chocolat from Kultur next door are so good that I’ve never tried Take Five’s food, but if it’s as good as their coffee it would be a treat indeed.

I follow Take Five on Instagram and there’s something about some places you visit on holiday that means you feel invested in them long after you have headed home with a heavy heart. So when I heard that Take Five had been so successful that they’d expanded and taken a second site across the city, I was as happy for them as I would have been any Reading-based business. But the original branch on Voldersstraat, with its beautiful tiled floor and its soothing, sophisticated atmosphere, will always be my first port of call.

Take Five Espresso
Voldersstraat 10, Gent
http://www.take-five-espressobar.be

7. Café Labath

According to their website, Café Labath was the very first third wave coffee joint in Ghent, opening twelve years ago. And I felt like I could sense that when I stopped there for a latte, that this was a place that didn’t feel the need to try too hard, that was comfortable in its own skin, knew what it was about and had nothing to prove. That showed too in the beautiful space they had created, all parquet floor and Ercol-style chairs, making best use of the corner plot and the huge windows to allow the very best people-watching experience. I loved the way that, as with Take Five, the public seating outside had been worked into the space, giving multiple options for al fresco drinking in better weather.

If anything, the less calculated interior led me to underestimate the coffee, but when my latte – ordered through a QR code at the table with no need to queue – turned up it was creditable. I had only stopped at Labath on the off chance to grab a quick shot of caffeination before lunch in the area, but when I return to Ghent I plan to have a far more leisurely drink there.

Café Labath
Oude Houtlei 1, Gent
https://www.cafelabath.com

8. Clouds In My Coffee

Clouds In My Coffee is one of the most stylish cafés I’ve seen in over a decade of going to Europe and seeking these places out. Quite aside from the Carly Simon reference, which manages not to be naff, the inside is truly gorgeous, like something out of Living Etc. From the street it looks small (and is surprisingly hard to find) but through the back is a wonderfully light, airy extension and beyond that another of those idyllic secret gardens that Ghent cafés seem to all have up their sleeves.

Did I want a coffee? Absolutely. Was my latte delicious? Of course it was. Did I look at the menu and wonder if it was too early for an Aperol Spritz? You bet I did. And did I feel like I was soaking up design tips for the duration of my visit? Yes, along with thinking Why doesn’t Reading have anywhere like this? The only drawback is that Clouds In My Coffee is the epitome of the best house on a bad street: Dampoort, where it lives, is an up and coming part of Ghent that, from my visit, has more upping and coming to do (the cafe’s website calls it a “multicolour fuse”, which I think is nicely poetic). The walk there from the tram stop involved walking through an Aldi car park and, for an awful moment, I thought I’d wandered through a wormhole in space and found myself on the outskirts of Basingstoke. Still worth a visit though, if only to go somewhere that fitted in about as much as I did.

Clouds In My Coffee
Dendermondsesteenweg 104, Gent
https://www.clouds9000.com/en/cafe-gallery

9. Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant

On my first visit to Ghent, at the tail end of autumn 2018, I rather liked Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, a tall building by the canal (aren’t they all?) with rooms across several floors: the room right at the top reminded me of mid-90s boho drinking culture in a way which somehow summoned up memories of Bar Iguana. But it wasn’t until I went back on a hot July afternoon in 2022 that I really got what the fuss was about – sitting at a sunny table, overlooking the canal, surrounded by other afternoon revellers of all shapes and sizes it was an extremely agreeable place to while away a few hours and sink a tall, cold Brugse Zot on draft. We don’t have a word, really, for what time spent like that is like but I believe the Dutch describe it as gezellig.

Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant
Groentenmarkt 9, Gent
https://www.facebook.com/Waterhuis-aan-de-Bierkant-171209319595287/

10. Dulle Griet

There are two very traditional beer places in Ghent with enormous lists, the kind of places CAMRA types hit up on a tour of the city. One is Trollkelder, which I’ve never really taken to – I had a drink outside it once but was faintly perturbed by the models of trolls in the window, glaring at you as you sip your beer. But Dulle Griet, named after a character called Mad Meg from Flemish folklore, was more my sort of thing.

On previous visits I’ve had a drink outside in the front room and enjoyed the idiosyncratic decor: just look at all the random shit hanging from the ceiling. But I now realise that didn’t really do it justice, and on my most recent trip we had a few drinks there in the evening, sitting in a little booth out back, admiring the way any good Belgian bar covers every inch of wall space with signs, mirrors and memorabilia from the country’s seemingly limitless roster of breweries.

The beer list is indeed extensive – around 500 different options, apparently – and so intimidating that it makes the Little Bear’s look like a pamphlet. Prices are elevated compared to their neighbours in Bruges too, with many of the beers a few Euros more expensive (in fairness I’ve never settled up at the Little Bear without thinking is that all?), but I’d say it’s worth it for the experience. I was there on a Thursday night when the place was rammed, and when I gave up my plum spot left before closing time, knowing that I had packing and an early checkout in my future, I felt something of a wrench.

Oh, and however hungry you are, don’t order the cheese. I don’t know what that stuff is, but it’s not cheese in any meaningful sense.

Dulle Griet
Vrijdagmarkt 50, Gent
http://www.dullegriet.be/en/

11. Gitane

Gitane remains my favourite bar in Ghent, and one of my favourite bars in the whole wide world. When I went to Ghent in 2018 I fell completely in love with it, although when I returned in 2022 it was in the summer, the whole world was sitting outside and being at the only occupied table indoors felt a little bit forlorn and neglected.

Well, I don’t know why I thought that, because returning last month I was reminded of just what a wonderful place it is. It’s all panelled walls and red banquettes – I know I overuse the word “conspiratorial” to describe places like this, but I’m yet to find a better word. It’s louche without being sleazy, dimly lit without being dingy, and I like it a great deal. It helps that the beer list is good too – a model of pared-down focus compared to the bloat of places like Dulle Griet, but with a great yet compact selection including options from less widely seen breweries like Brouwcompagnie Rolling Hills and the always excellent De Leite.

Gitane
Meerseniersstraat 9, Gent
https://facebook.com/100054309860476/

12. Django

When I booked a table at Boris & Maurice, in Sint Amandsberg, I thought it would be nice to have a pre-dinner drink in the area. And the only thing I could find that was suitable, really, was a bar just over five minutes away called Django. We’ll go there, I thought. How bad can it be? And I love it when this happens, because it was the find of the holiday.

It was so louche, so hip, so suitable for nighthawks that it made Gitane look like the Hope Tap. From the red lighting to the formica topped tables, from the leather booths out back to the neon sign on the wall, from the wood-panelled bar to the textured concrete ceiling with a mirrorball hanging from it, it was an interiors nut’s Christmasses all come at once. It even has an upstairs balcony floor, nearer that mirrorball, where you can look down on all the ineffable coolness below. Why had I never heard anybody talking about this place, or ever seen a review anywhere? It was almost the perfect bar.

All it needed was great drinks. Except it transpired that they had those too, with brilliant Belgian pale Ouwen Duiker and iconic Tripel Karmeliet both on draft. The barman even apologised for bringing the latter in the wrong glass, something you would only ever hear in Belgium. So really all it needed was great food – but the local sausage with mustard, yours for three Euros, was coarse and unbelievably delicious. To think people in the U.K. get all excited about a packet of Tayto: they must be laughing at us on the continent. And although I didn’t get to try it Django also did a very attractive range of pizzas – just looking at the menu made me want to cancel my dinner plans.

Next time I go to Ghent I will spend a whole evening here, although if I do I may be sorely tempted to go the whole hog and move to Sint Amandsberg. I wonder if Ghent needs an itinerant restaurant blogger?

Django
Antwerpsesteenweg 330
https://www.instagram.com/djangogent/?hl=en-gb

13. HAL 16

HAL 16 is the craft beer capital of Ghent, a combination of food hall and tap room for local Dok Brewing out in the docklands, about ten minutes from the centre by bus or twenty on foot. It is honestly one of my favourite places in Ghent and since discovering it I’ve never visited the city without giving it a try. My first visit was in January 2019, when I think it had just opened, but it and the complex around it have gone from strength to strength on every successive visit.

I turned up on a Wednesday evening around 6 o’clock after buying some beer at the excellent De Hopduvel just around the corner, and the place began to fill up almost immediately after, the long tables being taken by group after group of young, cool, happy urbanites. None of them were saying dreary stuff like “but it’s a school night”, and they were probably drawn by the colossal range of beer on offer. Thirty lines on keg, many of them by Dok Brewing but with a number of guest beers including stuff you just wouldn’t otherwise see. On my most recent visit I got to try a sharp, peachy sour by tiny Trial & Ale Brewing, from Edmonton, Alberta, and I really loved it.

But the booze isn’t the only draw, because HAL 16 also has three terrific food traders to make sure you stick around. One, Officina Raffaelli, does pizza, pasta and antipasti and the stuff I’ve had from them has been decent. A second does burgers, and I’m sure they’re excellent, although I’ve never tried one. But the reason for that is that the third trader, RØK, does some of the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten – better than anything in the U.K., and for my money better than Copenhagen’s Warpigs. In the past I’ve raved about their pork chop, rhapsodised about their lamb neck.

But on this trip, although I liked my confit duck leg and absolutely adored Zoë’s beef rib, smoked for 10 hours, the standout dish was a vegetarian one – cauliflower, brick-red and sticky with a savoury marinade, its perimeter blackened and crispy from the grill, the whole plate festooned with a zigzag of curry mayo. Even writing this makes me hungry and sad because we only ordered one dish of it, shared it between two and then moved on somewhere else. This is how you get people to become vegetarian, by offering something this good so everyone wants their own, reluctantly sharing some beef rib into the bargain just to keep up appearances.

HAL 16
Dok-Noord 4b, Gent
https://www.hal16.be

14. Stadsbrouwerij Gruut

Gruut is the city centre’s only working brewery. It’s far more central than Dok Brewing and far more trad – they serve an amber ale, a blonde beer, a wheat beer, a brown ale and a triple and that’s it, no sours or lambics or more esoteric stuff. And they have a rich brewing heritage – their little booklet shows you that founder Annick De Splenter, who began the business in 2009, comes from a veritable family tree of Belgian brewing expertise.

So it might not surprise you to hear that it’s a really lovely, quirky and slightly eccentric place to while away some time. I tried their amber ale, which I really enjoyed, on a quiet weekday afternoon when the weather wasn’t quite nice enough to take advantage of their outside seating: a British delegation, seemingly from CAMRA, were camped outside before 2pm waiting for the place to open and had no such qualms. It’s a lovely place and I could happily have dallied there longer but I had places to go, food to eat, other beers to drink and, ultimately, a guide to write. Plus they charge you fifty cents to use the loo, according to one of the signs, and who carries cash any more?

Stadsbrouwerij Gruut
Rembert Dodoensdreef 1, Ghent
https://www.gruut.be

(Click here to read more city guides.)

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City guide: Bruges and Ghent

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This guide has been updated and split in two. If you’re looking for an updated Ghent guide, from April 2024, it can be found here. If you’re looking for an updated Bruges guide the new one, from 2026, is here.

Last week’s feature on al fresco dining got a fantastic response from you all, and is already, at the time of writing, the most popular piece I’ve published on the blog this year: thank you so much to everybody who read it, commented, recommended it and passed it on. And after the week we’ve had I have high hopes that it will come in handy for a while yet – in fact the weekend it came out I had dinner outside the Lyndhurst one night, Buon Appetito the next. So if reading it made you feel hungry I can assure you that writing it had much the same effect.

Anyway, by contrast this week it’s one of those pieces that’s a bit more niche, that will only interest a handful of you, so apologies in advance for that. But I had such an enjoyable week in Bruges and Ghent last month that I thought it was ripe for a piece, especially because my last guide to Ghent – the first city guide I ever wrote on the blog – is a creaking three and a half years old. Both cities are well worth visiting, both are gorgeous and ridiculously easy to reach by Eurostar and both offer a holiday unmarred by the flight chaos we might well see for the rest of the year.

Of the two I would say Bruges is smaller, quainter and (even) more beautiful, although it’s very touristy and decidedly sleepy of an evening once the coachloads of day trippers have moved on. Ghent is larger and more sprawling, with much more of a big city feel. Its historic parts are reminiscent of Bruges but it also has street art, a modern art gallery, a design museum and more of a craft beer scene outside the traditional Belgian pubs.

As a tourist, you could easily do Bruges in a long weekend, as a beer devotee you could explore it for a lifetime and never tire of the place. Having now made three trips in just over six months, I completely get its magic and understand why it’s captured the hearts of many people I know. If you aren’t nuts about beer, Ghent might keep you occupied longer. But they’re half an hour apart on the train, so you could easily (as I have) make a two centre holiday of both.

Oh, one other thing before I get started – this is only based on places I went to on this year’s visit. So my piece about Ghent from 2018/2019 is potentially still worth a read, it’s just that I can’t vouch for places like Brasserie Du Progres, Oak, Otomat and Barista (I bet they’re great, though). I can however guarantee that the pastries from Himschoot are as gorgeous as they ever were: they’ve even opened a few additional branches since I was there last.

Bruges

1. Bruut

Bruut is in a handsome building next to an absurdly beautiful bridge overlooking the canal, and inside it’s all rather convivial – leather chairs, fetching tiled floors and exposed light fittings. But there are a few al fresco tables by the side of the bridge with a gorgeous view, and that’s where I sat when I had lunch there, one of my meals of the year. Chef Bruno Timperman offers a no-choice, no-substitutions set menu for lunch or dinner and comes out to introduce and talk through many of the dishes himself. And put simply, the man is a wizard: I don’t normally talk about chefs in my blog but this is all very much in his image and it’s very much his show.

Nothing I ate was short of dazzling, and there were almost too many highlights to mention, but a steak tartare made simply with high-grade beef, salt and milk to draw out all the flavour was a tender, mineral miracle. A pre-lunch nibble of prawns, cooked whole and dusted with a vivid raspberry powder was like nothing I’ve ever eaten. And our dessert, cherries halved, hollowed and filled wih rose-coloured chocolate, topped with discs of elderflower jelly and sitting in a cherry gazpacho dotted with cherry balsamic, will live in my memory for a long time. My only regret is not taking up the wine pairing – although in my defence it was only lunchtime, and the beer list has some superb lambics on it which made for an excellent alternative.

I made a repeat visit in January 2023 for dinner and experienced the full whistles and bells experience, although with no booze because I was a little subpar. Not everything worked – a beautiful piece of cod wrapped in crispy nori and topped with caviar was submerged under an icky spooge of what Bruno called “plankton sauce” wasn’t quite my bag – but he served the most tender pigeon I’ve ever eaten, with a pigeon confit ragu wrapped up in a leaf on the side, an astonishing scallop with a Belgian take on XO sauce and a poached pear with yoghurt parfait which made some tried and tested staples seem fresh and new. If you eat one meal in Bruges, go here.

Bruut
Meestraat 9, Brugge
https://bistrobruut.be/en/

2. Assiette Blanche

More classic and formal and a little less cutting edge, Assiette Blanche has an attractive wood-panelled dining room and the meal I had there was top notch. They have a set menu or an a la carte (although you can sort of switch between the two) and the set, for dinner, starts at a reasonable forty-four Euros for three courses.

The dishes here are generous – robust but not clumsy, but certainly not a fiddly-plated exercise in nouvelle nonsense. I enjoyed the whole lot but my particular favourite was a monkfish saltimbocca, the flesh firm and pearlescent, the guanciale it was wrapped in providing salt and smoke. The whole thing was on a bed of prawns and fregola, cut through with a dressing sporting just the right amount of vinegar. A white chocolate and rhubarb dessert, complete with a sweet, sticky syrup that spoke of time well spent, wrapped things up with a perfect bow.

On a subsequent visit in October 2022 I tried the set lunch menu, which was both superb and excellent value. And then for good measure I went back in January 2024 to find it still very much firing on all cylinders: a carpaccio of scallops with cauliflower couscous, two hulking wedges of black pudding with apple, pickled beetroot and little dabs of foie creme, a beautiful sabayon with blood orange were all simply knockout. For consistent excellence, Assiette Blanche is probably the first place I would book on a return visit.

Assiette Blanche
Philipstockstraat 23, Brugge
https://www.assietteblanche.be/nl

3. Más

Más is only open evenings Wednesday to Saturday, and is walk-ins only, although they very nicely take your number and ring you when they have some space, leaving you free to enjoy a beer somewhere (I had mine at De Garre, where the house triple is 11%: with hindsight not the most sensible choice). It’s worth jumping through those hoops, because Más’ Mexican food is as delicious as it is incongruous, from beautiful cheesy quesadillas to pork belly skewers with salsa, from tacos to their excellent fried chicken.

On our first visit in 2023 we ate up at the bar, and it was reminiscent of some of my happiest meals in more Mediterranean parts of Europe. Returning in 2024 I found that, if anything, the food had got even better. The fried chicken now came with a tomato sauce with a deep touch of mole about it, the quesadillas were even more decadent and all three types of taco we tried were simply brilliant although my favourites remained the shrimp, elevated with little crunchy nuggets of chorizo.

They have cocktails on tap too, apparently, although I’ve never given them a try. They have a good range of beers from Brussels Beer Project, though, which went nicely, and the excellent Lupulus NEIPA which has, to my palate, notes of mango. It pairs perfectly with one of the two desserts on the menu, the “Solero Solero” which tastes exactly as you would expect from the name, only more so.

Màs
Academiestraat 10, Brugge
https://www.instagram.com/mas.brugge/?hl=en

4. Amuni

You might think it’s a little meh to have pizza in Bruges, and you might be right. But I’m yet to find a very traditional restaurant in Bruges that really hit the spot: Gran Kaffee de Passage was a bit hit and miss, the interior better than the food (I’m reliably informed that I should try Brasserie Raymond next time). And you may want somewhere for a good lightish lunch that isn’t a moule frites place: if so, Amuni is for you. Just next to the Burg it’s a stylish space which does excellent pizza – although my favourite thing there was the vitello tonnato which we foolishly ordered to share. It’s far too good to share: make sure you order your own.

Amuni
Burg 9, Brugge
https://www.amuni.be

5. Onslow

Onslow was the discovery of my trip in January 2024, and I absolutely loved it there. Slightly off the beaten track in Bruges’ Sint-Anna district it’s the kind of achingly-cool-without-trying restaurant you wish was just around the corner from you, and I detected some similarities with some of my favourite places in the U.K., like Bristol’s Marmo, along with Ghent’s sadly-closed and much missed de Superette. It’s all plain unshowy tables and bare white walls, but the place had a real verve when I visited.

The menu is made up of a handful of snacks and a bunch of sharing plates, and the bright and affable staff tell you to aim for about four sharing plates between two. We over-ordered with reckless abandon – and zero regrets, because everything was outstanding.

One of my favourite things was yoghurt, positively singing with citrus, smothered in gochujang, crispy chilli and toasted seeds, with toasted naan for dipping. Onslow’s fried chicken is easily the equal of Más’ – big craggy pieces of the stuff executed perfectly with a spiced dip speckled with black and white sesame. A tartiflette pizza was so thin and light it reminded me more of pissaladière, which is emphatically not a bad thing, and beef was served blushing, thinly sliced and served with a sauce of impressive complexity with a hint of help from some Szechuan pepper. A classic old-school dame blanche – just ice cream and chocolate sauce, no cream – was the perfect note to end on.

If I have a more enjoyable meal in 2024 I’ll have done very well for myself, and I will definitely be back. I have to say though that when I do, I will specifically ask for any table other than the tiny cramped corner table they originally put us at: with the table top pressing into my ample middle and the window ledge poking into my back it was like eating in an S shape with a makeshift gastric band fitted. We asked to move the moment a better table came free and I spend some of my time firing sympathetic glances at the poor couple who eventually took our place.

Onslow
Jeruzalemstraat 53, Brugge
https://www.onslowbrugge.be

6. Goesepitte 43

Another 2024 discovery, Goesepitte 43 is a very accomplished restaurant in a handsome townhouse in the south-west of the city. I went there for my final lunch of the holiday, partly because chef Jan Supply offers a no choice 34 Euro set lunch even on Saturdays and I wanted to see if it was any good. It really is, and you eat it in a really beautiful dining room with top-class service: one man covers all front of house, is perfectly bilingual and charm personified.

It’s so nicely judged and a great place to go if you want an excellent lunch where you leave thoroughly satisfied but not stuffed. An amuse bouche something like a mushroom duxelles set the scene nicely, but far better was to come: a risotto with fine herbs, edged with olive oil, was topped with a beautiful slice of parsnip, cooked on their Mibrasa oven (whatever that is), carrying a precious cargo of toasted pine nuts and dill. Pork was served pink on a slab of charred cauliflower, its fractal edges blackened and savoury.

And if I was a little underwhelmed by my chocolate and coffee ganache, it might mostly have been envy from staring at the dame blanche opposite me. Even so, my meal was easily enough of a treat to make me want to explore the a la carte next time. Not only is the wine list great, and the aperitif cocktail equally so, but the drinks list also contains some excellent beer if your tastes skew that way.

Goesepitte 43
Goezeputstraat 43, Brugge
https://www.goesepitte43.be/en

7. Cuvee

Bruges is a beer city, no doubt about it. So you really have to admire the pluck and persistance of Cuvee, a wine bar right in the centre which has been going for something like 20 years. Not only that, but for over 15 of those it has exclusively stocked natural wine, which makes it a true trailblazer in more ways than one. The owner told me all about this as I settled our bill at the end of a hugely enjoyable lunch in January 2024. She said it was especially tough when they switched to natural wine, and that this made them a bit of a figure of fun in Bruges’ food and drink fraternity.

Well, to quote the great Alan Partridge: needless to say, Cuvee has had the last laugh. Because what they’ve built is quite something: a deceptively huge, incredibly tasteful space absolutely packed with cool furniture and gorgeous bottles of wine. There’s space out front for groups, a little snug at the back which would be perfect for drinking with friends and some tables for dining, looking up at the counter.

There is also, I am happy to say, a really terrific menu of the kind of food that goes well with wine. I adored my duck rillette with piccalilli and thin melba toasts, and was blown away by a couple of enormous cheese croquettes, so glossy under their crisp shell, completely different from their distant Iberian cousins. Zoë was hugely taken with a pumpkin and sour cream dip (which also came with naan for dipping: perhaps this is A Thing in Bruges).

But even better was a plate of marinated salmon with thinly sliced spring onion and phenomenal olive oil by natural wine makers Le Coste – quite a paradigm shift for anybody used to pairing smoked salmon with cream cheese or thickly spread salted butter. We left with two bottles of white wine expertly chosen for us by the owner, and a business card. After all, we have a joint stag and hen do to organise and I know just the place for afternoon drinks.

Cuvee
Philipstockstraat 41, Brugge
https://cuvee.be/en/

8. Kottee Kaffee

For an actual light lunch, instead of a pizza, I highly recommend the muted but chic Kottee Kaffee. It’s on Ezelstraat, a street with a scattering of tasteful boutiques, and it offers a menu which is sort of Le Pain Quotidien but independent. So there’s lots of lovely bread and salted farmhouse butter, cheeses and charcuterie but the menu offers lots of more brunchy stuff if that’s your bag. Very fetchingly put together, decent value and there’s good coffee too. But perhaps just as winning were the staff and the constant playlist of 90s music, most of which they enjoyed singing along to.

On my first visit at the start of 2023 we asked how long they’d been there and apparently they’ve been open less than a year. You’d never have known. Returning in January 2024 I was delighted to see it thriving, and as stylish and buzzy as ever. This time I tackled something more substantial, their tartiflette which was a glorious, slowly solidifying wodge of potatoes, cream, cheese and little nubbins of sausage. They serve fantastic coffee too – and if you feel even remotely sub-par, their ginger shots will sort you right out.

Kottee Kaffee
Ezelstraat 68, Brugge
https://kotteekaffee.com/en/

9. Vero Caffè

Bruges has lots of pretty patisseries where the priorities are the cakes and pastries and the coffee, though perfectly pleasant, plays second fiddle. I went to one on my final morning in the city and we waited ages to get served and even longer to get the bill: the pain au chocolat was good, but not that good. Far better, in a little square with some outside space, was Vero Caffè. It also sells excellent squidgy brownies, exactly as you would like them, so it gets my vote. They were absolutely rammed when I returned in January 2024 but still doing superlative coffee – along with a decent carrot cake and sublime dark, fudgy chocolate cake.

Vero Caffè
Sint-Jansplein 9, Brugge
https://www.facebook.com/VeroCaffeBrugge/

10. Cherry Picker

Come for the music, stay for the atmosphere! is the slogan of this record shop in the east of the city. Come for the music stay for the coffee, more like, because it served one of my favourite coffees in Bruges. I love places like this – it reminded me of Truck Records, out on Oxford’s Cowley Road – and I’d have happily whiled away longer sitting outside or inside with a good book. They do cocktails and beer too, although precisely how much they expect you to put away before they close at 6pm is anybody’s guess.

A return visit in January 2024 confirmed that it’s simply one of the nicest places to sit nursing a coffee, and I simply love the fact that the coffee is so much better than it needs to be. Make sure you have Shazam installed on your phone before you go to Cherry Picker, because you will end up using it.

Cherry Picker
Langestraat 74, Brugge
https://www.cherrypicker.be

11. Coffeebar Adriaan

On my visit in October 2022 I became a regular visitor to Adriaan for the first coffee of the day and I became thoroughly attached to the place – it’s a tasteful, classy spot, all muted mint green and comfy furniture, the antithesis of craft coffee places in the U.K. and abroad with their reliance on chipboard. The coffee is pretty good, the pastries are spot on and the service is friendly and speedy. Every city break needs a reliable coffee place like this, although you may find yourself channelling Rocky Balboa whenever you mention the place (or that might be just me).

Coffeebar Adrian
Adriaan Willaertstraat 7
https://coffeebaradriaan.be

12. Cafune

Cafune probably does the best coffee I had in Bruges, and is in a small and likeable spot two doors down from Màs, in a street which also boasts the fantastic and fascinating beer shop Bacchus Cornelius (top tip: head to the back room for the white whales of the Belgian beer world). They roast their own coffee – and very good it is too – and they have a small but comfy space inside, although I got quite attached, figuratively speaking, to their little bench outside.

Just as well, as they were semi-closed for a makeover when I returned in January 2024, only serving takeaway coffee. You could still perch on the bench outside though, so it remains a real happy place in Bruges. One word of warning which applies equally to Cafune and at least one other café in this list – opening days can be a tad random and quixotic, so make sure you have a plan B in case you traipse here only to find them closed.

Cafune
Academiestraat 8, Brugge
https://www.instagram.com/cafunecoffee/

13. Café Rose Red

From hearing Zoë talk about Café Rose Red I was expecting to like it a lot, and I wasn’t disappointed. A rather attractive room, all red walls and roses hanging from the ceiling, it had a decent if not incredible beer list and an interesting range of options on tap. I’d heard good things about the food and so we ordered a few bits and pieces to graze on. The assorted cheese and charcuterie was surprisingly disappointing, but I think the trick is to go for dishes that the kitchen has cooked rather than simply dished up: the kibbeling – battered chunks of fish with a mild, soothing tartare sauce – was the equal of any similar dish I’ve had in Andalusia.

Café Rose Red
Cordoeanierstraat 16, Brugge
https://www.rosered.be/nl/

14. ’t Brugs Beertje

I probably would have liked Café Rose Red a lot more if I’d liked ’t Brugs Beertje a little less, but that was never going to happen. The Little Bear is arguably the Belgian watering hole elevated to its ultimate form, a little conspiratorial place with a great selection on tap and an eye-wateringly brilliant list of bottled beers, including many Belgian breweries I’d never heard of and a “vintage” section which gave you the chance to try dark beers and lambics which had been properly cared for across the best part of a decade. I had a Cuvée Delphine from 2013 by De Struise which had the kind of depth and complexity that haunts your imagination long after you’ve taken your final sip.

But more than the impressive selection, it just felt like the perfect place to stop, drink, eavesdrop, people-watch and potentially get into random conversations. The middle room complete with plaque to original Belgian beer spod Michael Jackson (not that one, a different one) was nice, but the front room was where you wanted to be, at a table with your favourite person, making inroads into that excellent list, in no hurry to be anywhere else. It reminded me of the Retreat in its previous incarnation under Bernie and Jane, when it stocked shedloads of Belgian beers – and always the right glasses to go with them – and it made me miss the Retreat of ten years ago, too.

But either way, whether you were there in a pair or, as I’ve experienced a couple of times, in a big raucous group of beer obsessives, all diving into the depths of the gigantic beer list, congratulating one another on their choices and swapping anecdotes and in jokes, it is for me the epicentre of Bruges, and absolutely not to be missed. It doesn’t have lock-ins per se, but I have no idea when it really closes. On one particularly beautiful evening there we settled up, well past midnight, put our coats on, stepped through the front door, looked back at the golden glow of the windows and thought what the fuck are we doing? We went back in for one last nightcap.

’t Bruges Beertje
Kemelstraat 5, Brugge
https://www.brugsbeertje.be/en/home-2/

15. De Kelk

De Kelk, on the other side of the road from Cherry Picker, is quite unlike the other beer places on this list. Although it does have an excellent range of Belgian beer, the list skews more to the wider craft scene with fascinating beers from breweries I’d never come across before. I tried a couple of beautiful DIPAs from Madrid’s Cerveceria Peninsula and Latvia’s Ārpus, and if I’d stayed longer there was plenty more to explore.

The interior is cracking too – a far cry from Belgium’s more traditional pubs with a tiled floor, high leather stools and lighting that’s more speakeasy than boozer, with some random streetlights used to good effect. I also loved the bar snacks, which included some disgraceful keesballen and very creditable jamon serrano. I went back last month and if anything it cemented its place in my affections – it’s brave to be like De Kelk in a city full of brown pubs and Belgian beer, and I wish them every success. Their bottle list contained countless imperial stouts I would dearly have loved to try.

De Kelk
Langestraat 69, Brugge
http://www.dekelk.be

16. De Windmolen

De Windmolen, out past De Kelk at the edge of the city and a stone’s throw from the windmills from which it takes its name, isn’t a place for beer purists. It’s sort of part-pub, part day café and most days it closes at 8pm. The inside is pleasingly eccentric: when we went this month one table was taken up by a very competitive-looking card game. And the beer list skews to bottled triples, although they do have local Brugse Zot on tap and it never disappoints. But for me it’s a special place – especially when I visited in October 2022, and could sit outside, coatless, while the back of my neck was gently baked by the completely unseasonal autumn sunshine. Worth a stop, even if only for the one.

De Windmolen
Carmersstraat 135, Brugge

Ghent

1. De Superette

Tragically, Superette closed in late 2022.

Whenever I researched places to eat in Ghent, De Superette always came up but for some reason I’d never taken the plunge and booked a table there. And then on this visit I did and in the run up to going I looked on TripAdvisor (as you do) and had a bit of a wobble. Lots of people said it was overrated, or expensive, or small portions or suchlike.

Well, I overcame my fears and went and was rewarded with a superb meal which made me wonder what all the naysayers were carping about. It’s a bakery by day and pizza place by night, offering a really compact selection of pizzas and a little tasting menu of small plates to start you off. It was the kind of place you wanted to click your fingers and teleport back home, just round the corner from where you lived, and the clientele – a huge range of ages and types of groups – were all clearly having a marvellous time.

And the food was excellent. The small plates were clever, inventive and cracking value – glorious, just-cooked peas with guanciale, a moutabal brimming with smokiness, a clever gazpacho studded with pine nuts. And then the pizzas turned out to be some of the best I’ve had anywhere, all fluffy crust and supercharged clusters of ‘nduja. I left full, happy and determined to return. The table next to us, on the other hand, ordered two pizzas between five. Maybe it’s people like that who complain about small portions: if so, I have a really simple life hack they’re welcome to borrow.

De Superette
Guldenspoorstraat 29, Gent
http://www.de-superette.be

2. De Lieve

De Lieve closed in late 2022.

De Lieve featured in my previous guide to Ghent and I’ve eaten there on every single visit. Between my last visit and my latest, though, something happened: De Lieve was recognised by Michelin and awarded a Bib Gourmand, their badge of affordable high quality food. And the De Lieve I went to in 2019 was absolutely the kind of restaurant that gets a Bib Gourmand, but the De Lieve I went to last month feels like the kind of restaurant that’s aiming for a star, and that comes with pluses and minuses.

So it felt like the tables were that little bit closer together, the prices were that little bit sharper and the portions were that little bit smaller. The quality was still top notch, don’t get me wrong – my carpaccio of hamachi was a delicate, pretty, subtle dish, but by the time I finished it (a few seconds later) I was thinking about the bag of paprika Walkers Max back at the apartment and wondering if I’d be breaking into them in the not too distant future.

Fortunately balance was restored with a delicious Basque t-bone with rosemary gratin and a deeply pleasing jus, and a cracking tarte tatin completed an enjoyable, if pricey meal. It felt to me like bumping into a friend after a few years to find they’ve had very good, very expensive plastic surgery done. You know they look great, but in the back of your mind you think was that really necessary? Still, if you’ve never been it’s definitely worth considering on a visit to Ghent: I just miss the days when they had a puck of divine black pudding on the starters menu.

De Lieve
Sint-Margrietstraat 1, Gent
https://www.eetkaffee-delieve.be/nl

3. De Rechters

Still my favourite place for traditional Belgian food, De Rechters is a contemporary-looking restaurant which is far better than it needs to be given its plum spot next to St Bavo’s Cathedral. On this occasion, for the first time, I got to sit outside in the sunshine and it made a good meal, if anything, even better. We drank Orval, and Zoë pointed out to me that her beer and mine were bottled on different days, which explained why mine was fizzier than hers: I love it when she goes full Raymond Babbitt about beer like that.

Never having had moules in Belgium – I know, such an oversight – I had some as a starter, cooked simply with thyme and they were plump and fragrant. But next time I’ll go the whole hog and have them as a main with garlic and cream, which for me is the only way really to eat moules, dipping your bread and frites into the sauce until you are truly replete.

The frites, incidentally, were a bit wan on this visit – which is a shame, because frites are something Belgium does better than practically anybody. But the stoverij, beer slow-cooked in beer until the whole thing is a symphony of dark brown, almost-sweet ambrosia, is worth the price of admission alone. You can get frites anywhere but beef like that requires patience and skill, both of which De Rechters has in abundance.

De Rechters
Sint-Baafsplein 23, Gent
https://derechters.be/nl/

4. STEK

On my holiday in Belgium I tried to learn from previous trips away and put a strict rule in place: one big meal a day. Maybe all of you already do this when you go on holiday, but sadly I’ve never been great at restraint and although it means I’ve eaten some amazing food it does make the post-holiday Monday comedown a downer of epic proportions. What do you mean I can’t have sherry at lunchtime and go to a restaurant? I’ll rail to nobody in particular. Make my own meals? Who does that?

On the plus side, it meant I could discover Ghent’s brunch scene, and that in turn meant a thoroughly worthwhile visit to STEK, an achingly cool cafe halfway between the centre and the modern art gallery. Inside it’s all plants – a lot of monsteras and plenty of other flora I wouldn’t recognise – and outside there’s a serene terrace, a proper secret garden with plenty of space where you feel nowhere near a big city. It reminded me a bit of the surprise you get when you walk through the Boston Tea Party on Bristol’s Park Street to find that massive garden out back or, closer to home, the bang-up job the Collective has done with its outside space.

Since I was embracing lunch and brunch I decided to go the whole hog and order the avo toast. Mine came with superbly crispy, curled, caramelised bacon, a fried egg with the yolk still runny, shoots and leaves and a little side salad and it was as pretty as its surroundings. It tasted phenomenal too, and the coffee wasn’t bad either. Maybe there are pluses to having a lighter lunch after all.

STEK
Nederkouter 129, Gent
https://www.stekgent.be

5. Take Five Espresso

My absolute favourite coffee place of the holiday was Take Five Espresso in the centre of Ghent. I never completely decided whether I preferred being inside, sat up at the big windows watching city life bustling by or outside in the sun (their seating is dead clever, making full use of the public benches on the street). What I did work out though was that their lattes were magnificent and that by the end of my trip it was hard to imagine being caffeinated anywhere else. It was the epitome of café chic and I enjoyed it a great deal. I never tried any of their food, but you can blame Kultur, the excellent bakery next door (and their pain au chocolat) for that.

Take Five Espresso
Voldersstraat 10, Gent
http://www.take-five-espressobar.be

6. Clouds In My Coffee

Clouds In My Coffee is one of the most stylish cafés I’ve seen in roughly a decade of going to Europe and seeking these places out. Quite aside from the Carly Simon reference, which manages not to be naff, the inside is truly gorgeous, like something out of Living Etc. From the street it looks small (and is surprisingly hard to find) but through the back is a wonderfully light, airy extension and beyond that another of those idyllic secret gardens that Ghent cafés seem to all have up their sleeves.

Did I want a coffee? Absolutely. Was my latte delicious? Of course it was. Did I look at the menu and wonder if it was too early for an Aperol Spritz? You bet I did. And did I feel like I was soaking up design tips for the duration of my visit? Yes, along with thinking Why doesn’t Reading have anywhere like this? The only drawback is that Clouds In My Coffee is the epitome of the best house on a bad street: Dampoort, where it lives, is an up and coming part of Ghent that, from my visit, has more upping and coming to do (the cafe’s website calls it a “multicolour fuse”, which I think is nicely poetic). The walk there from the tram stop involved walking through an Aldi car park and, for an awful moment, I thought I’d wandered through a wormhole in space and found myself on the outskirts of Basingstoke. Still worth a visit though, if only to go somewhere that fitted in about as much as I did.

Clouds In My Coffee
Dendermondsesteenweg 104, Gent
https://www.clouds9000.com/en/cafe-gallery

7. Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant

On my first visit to Ghent, at the tail end of autumn 2018, I rather liked Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, a tall building by the canal (aren’t they all?) with rooms across several floors: the room right at the top reminded me of mid-90s boho drinking culture in a way which somehow summoned up memories of Bar Iguana. But it wasn’t until I went back on a hot July afternoon that I really got what the fuss was about – sitting at a sunny table, overlooking the canal, surrounded by other afternoon revellers of all shapes and sizes it was an extremely agreeable place to while away a few hours and sink a tall, cold Brugse Zot on draft. We don’t have a word, really, for what time spent like that is like but I believe the Dutch describe it as gezellig.

Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant
Groentenmarkt 9, Gent
https://www.facebook.com/Waterhuis-aan-de-Bierkant-171209319595287/

8. Gitane

I waxed lyrical about Gitane after previous visits to Ghent, and it’s still one of my favourite watering holes. But, like Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, it was a decidedly different experience on a hot and sunny day: everybody was chattering away at tables which fill the street outside and if you’re forced to sit in, as we were, it made for a slightly Marie Celeste moment.

No matter: it’s still a great place for a cosy drink, all wood panels and tiled floor, and if the list is less compendious than those at Ghent’s more feted bars and pubs it makes up for that with some really interesting choices from some of Belgium’s less established breweries. I had a cracking New England IPA from Brouwcompagnie Rolling Hills which married East Flanders and the Eastern Seaboard very harmoniously indeed.

Gitane
Meerseniersstraat 9, Gent
https://facebook.com/100054309860476/

9. Dulle Griet

The two other “proper” Belgian pubs in Ghent, both with compendious beer lists, are Trollkelder and Dulle Griet. Both are idiosyncratic to put it lightly – I had a drink sitting outside Trollkelder only slightly put off by the weird models of trolls eyeballing you through the window. I liked Dulle Griet better, although both are an experience and you should at least try a drink in one of them. It’s named after Mad Meg, a figure in Flemish folklore who led an army of women to storm the gates of hell. Whether that explains the decor and all the weird figurines hanging from the ceiling I have no idea (I wouldn’t want to do their dusting, put it that way) but it made for an interesting and characterful place to stop for an afternoon beer, especially as they had Westmalle Dubbel, a Trappist favourite of mine, on draft. Given that they boast over five hundred different beers on their list, you’d probably find something to enjoy here.

Dulle Griet
Vrijdagmarkt 50, Gent
http://www.dullegriet.be/en/

10. HAL 16

HAL 16 is a food hall and brewery out towards the docks, and is a perfect place to visit whether you like beer, food or ideally both. I think it used to just be the tap room for local brewery Dok Brewing, but there have been some changes and it now shares the space with three different food vendors: think Blue Collar, but even more cool. There’s also a branch of the excellent bakery Himschoot just round the corner, terrific coffee from the nearby OR Espresso Bar and a beer shop – De Hopduvel – which sells all the beer (and matching glasses) you could possibly want for your trip home.

I had already bought a Dok Brewing glass from a shop in Bruges by then, because I was already a fan. Dok does some truly lovely beer and there are something like thirty taps at HAL 16, with a mixture of beers brewed on the premises and fascinating stuff from breweries I’d never even heard of: the highlight of this visit was a stunningly dank DIPA from Virginia’s Aslin Beer Company. But the other reason to come here is for the food from RØK (they like their block capitals in this part of town) which smokes and grills meat, hispi cabbage and anything else they think might be good.

On a previous visit in 2019 I had a huge, smoked, blackened pork chop, fresh off the grill, which ducked under the velvet rope and went straight into my gastronomic hall of fame without passing GO or collecting £200. This time round it was all about the lamb neck, tender and moreish, scattered with salt and served with a puddle of aioli and a properly zingy salsa verde. We made the mistake of ordering pizza from another vendor first and then picked up the lamb dish from RØK just before their kitchen closed, but when I return – and I will return – I’m ordering everything on their menu, even if it leads to a Mr Creosote situation.

HAL16
Dok-Noord 4b, Gent
https://www.hal16.be

(Click here to read more city guides.)

City guide: Ghent

On By ediblereadingIn Features, Travel2 Comments

Click here to read an updated city guide to Ghent, from April 2024.

Ghent and I, in truth, didn’t get off to the best of starts. On my first full day there, it rained: not light, manageable drizzle but nasty, hard rain, the sort that pelts and punishes you, angled to ghost in under any brolly, however well you positioned it (not that any brolly lasted long before being turned inside out by the wind). And it was cold: properly cold, four degrees cold. I had packed for the temperatures my phone had predicted, and it turned out that my phone had made a mistake. By mid afternoon I’d decided that I’d also made a mistake coming to this godforsaken place, a point I made repeatedly to my other half as we shivered back in our apartment. I always went on holiday somewhere warm this time of year, I told her – Granada last year, Malaga the year before – so what on earth was I thinking? She did her best to humour me, but mainly I think she was trying to decide whether to wring out her trainers.

Fortunately for all concerned, the rain wore itself out. That evening was clear and crisp, the following morning was bright and sunny and dry and I got to spend the rest of my holiday realising just how wrong I’d been about Ghent (and apologising for my undignified strop the day before). I’d never been to Belgium before, so I had no idea what to expect beyond my dim memories of In Bruges, so I was anticipating chocolate-boxy medieval architecture, cosy snug bars selling eye-wateringly strong beer, chocolate and waffles and frites and church towers.

Ghent had all of those things, but what I really liked was that it also had a proper buzz about it, a real meeting point between the old and the new. So yes, there was all that history and grandeur but also there was verve and vitality, interesting food, design, loads of street art, the whole shebang. I quite fell in love with the city during my time there, and not long after I came home I took full advantage of Eurostar’s festive sale and bought tickets to return nice and early in 2019.

I don’t normally write pieces about my travels, because it’s nice to visit somewhere new and eat uncritically (or as uncritically as I can, anyway) for a change. But I’ve had a few requests over the years and as it happens I quite regretted not writing my gastronomic guide to Granada last year, or Bologna and Porto this year. So, for the first time ever on the blog, this is my pick of the places to eat and drink in Ghent. I hope it makes you slightly want to go to Ghent, or at least want to go on a city break, or at the very least I hope it makes you slightly peckish.

I should also acknowledge in advance that I too benefited from recommendations – from regular reader Steve, who has been to Ghent many times and gave me plenty of tips of where to go for dinner, and from Katie who happened to be visiting Ghent with work not long before I did and road-tested some of Steve’s recommendations. Some of the credit for this piece is rightfully theirs – although of course if it’s rubbish the blame is mine alone.

Where to eat

I only ever really have breakfast on holiday, and even then that usually consists of a full English if I’m away in this country and the closest thing I can find to pain au chocolat if I’m abroad (even the miniature ones they do in hotel breakfast buffets: I’m really not fussy). One of my happiest discoveries of Ghent was Himschoot, the impossibly pretty bakery a stone’s throw from the river. They sell a huge assortment of tempting delights, and I spent several mornings joining the queue and listening to the patter of the man running a cart just outside selling cuberdons, a conical sweet which happens to be a Belgian speciality.

The pain au chocolat at Himschoot, which were so good that they were all I ever bought there, came not only with beautiful dark chocolate inside but with rich chocolate icing on top, like a cronut before cronuts were ever A Thing. Standing outside, greedily scoffing one right out of the bag while planning where to go exploring next was a real daily highlight.

On the one occasion I did actually fancy brunch we wandered slightly further away from the centre, out in the direction of the university (although Ghent is compact enough that nowhere is exactly a schlep – and flat, which makes a pleasant change after many holidays in places like Porto and Granada which could be euphemistically described as a tad steep). We ended up in Pain Perdu, one of those effortlessly cool cafes mainland Europe seems to specialise in, all big windows and tasteful long communal tables where you can sit, chat, gesticulate and pretend you belong. I rather enjoyed the bacon and eggs – served in a bowl, which I found quite novel – although the big draw might well have been the basket of terrific bread. If only Reading had a place like this, I said, as usual.

My best lunch of the trip was, well, dinner at lunchtime. We went to Du Progres, a beautiful old-school brasserie on Korenmarkt, pretty much the tourist epicentre of Ghent and fortunately not named after Britain’s most irritating restaurant critic. Given the location, it ought to have been a way to part fools and their money (and in, say, London it probably would have been) but actually it was a cracking, rather grand place where I had chateaubriand so good I could have wept – all for something ridiculous like fifty Euros for two.

It was a a huge piece of superb beef, cooked as little as they could get away with and carved at the table into thick, luscious slices. The frites were everything I could have dreamed they would be, the mayonnaise game-changing. You got a choice of two different sauces, which basically meant that we had two lots of Bearnaise. There’s no other sauce for me really where steak is concerned: there is something about the combination of frites, Bearnaise and blood which always makes me feel like I could be in heaven. My other half had a big, complex, outrageously strong dark beer and I had a glass of red wine and we ate and grinned and relaxed: in a perfect world, every lunch might be like that. Even the salad was so beautifully dressed that I ate some of it, for crying out loud.

Dinners in Ghent were more of an eclectic bunch, but there still wasn’t a duff meal among them. On our first night we went to Otomat, probably the least typically Belgian venue of the trip. It was very much a hipster-pizza-by-numbers place, all exposed brick and faux school chairs (Franco-Belge Manca, you could say), but even so the food was quite lovely. The pizza dough is made with Belgian beer, a nice touch which I couldn’t remotely taste, and the toppings were interesting, if eccentric.

The menu is divided into “Otomat” – an anagram of tomato, something I didn’t notice straight away – and “Notomat”, or white pizzas. My favourite was a pizza with merguez sausage (called “Rock The Kasbah”, but let’s not hold it against them) which completely exceeded my expectations. When it arrived the big, ruddy cylinders of sausage made me worry that I’d accidentally ordered spam, but it turned out to be perfect: coarse, pungent and genuinely delicious.

That said, the real hit at Otomat was the “Butcher’s Dish”, an embarrassment of riches featuring ham, fennel salami, very mature cheese, houmous (which may have had a hint of cumin in it) and, best of all, stracciatella, the gooey, almost liquid cheese you tend to find at the heart of burrata. This dish was the very first thing I ate in Ghent, along with – just as importantly, if not more so – the first Belgian beer of the trip and it was hard to top as a way of knowing that you really were on holiday.

On our second night we went to Bodo, which felt much more like a restaurant for locals than for tourists (and was none the worse for it). It was another intimate, friendly place with beautiful service where you felt like you were in on the same secret as your fellow diners, but it also had a slightly more international bent and more of an emphasis on small plates. Of course, I may just be describing it that way because the two of us shared three starters. One of them, slow-cooked sweet, tender fennel with little blobs of goat’s curd, scattered with toasted seeds, was one of the most extraordinary things I ate on the entire trip.

Many of the other dishes were almost as good: a huge portion of panko-coated chicken with a rich curried sauce underneath, a deconstructed katsu, or a big slab of pink pork belly served with mustard and piccalilli (again, when it turned up I feared it was spam, but from the first mouthful all those worries evaporated). And then, to finish, a glass of white chocolate mascarpone topped with passion fruit couli, a dessert seemingly made of sunshine. I didn’t realise until much later that Michelin had given the place a Bib Gourmand, but based on the dinner I had I wasn’t at all surprised. (N.B. Bodo sadly closed in October 2021, although the owners also run a natural wine bar called The Wan & Only).

I promised myself I would eat proper Belgian food, because it can’t all be small plates and pizza, and the venue I chose for that was De Rechters, a very handsome restaurant looking out on Saint Bavo’s Cathedral. I never saw the Van Eyck altarpiece inside the Cathedral, but I spent a fair amount of time in the square outside either eating dinner or buying chocolate at the splendidly-named Chocolaterie Luc Van Hoorebeke, which probably tells you all you need to know about my priorities. I expected from the menu that De Rechters would be stuffy and old-school but actually the inside was more contemporary than classic, with slate-grey walls and bentwood chairs (the service was exemplary, too: friendly and properly welcoming).

But the food! I’d already been tipped off to try the appetiser of Comte cheese with local Tierenteyn mustard, and although I’ve never been a huge fan of mustard I can safely say that this completely converted me; a couple of days later I was in the very picturesque Tierenteyn shop picking up a jar to take home (the shop is easily found: it’s right next to Himschoot). Next time, I plan to get a considerably bigger jar of mustard. Or three.

The real lure, though, was the chance to try stoverij, the iconic Belgian stew of beef slow-cooked in dark beer. When it arrived it was yet another heavenly gastronomic experience in a long line of heavenly gastronomic experiences. The table bore all the burn marks of every little cast-iron casserole they’d ever set down in front of a hungry, grateful diner but even so there was something magical about my first time, as if the restaurant had never cooked it for anybody else before.

The sauce was rich and deep, simultaneously savoury and sweet but with the tiniest kick of mustard. The beef was yielding, every bit as perfect as the chateaubriand had been but completely different in terms of texture and give. And, of course, there was a bottomless supply of frites to either dip in more mayo or soak in that sauce. It might have been the hefty kick of the Westmalle Dubbel I was drinking, but this felt like a bucket list dish and a half.

Picking somewhere for my final meal in Ghent was especially tricky – how do you top all of that? – but fortunately, help was at hand. Steve, my man in the know, had told me about a place called Eetkaffee De Lieve in Patershol, the medieval heart of Ghent. He went there every time he was in the city, he said, and checking out the place’s Instagram feed I could see why – bread baked every day, a constantly changing menu and really beautiful (and beautifully photographed) dishes. I went with high expectations, and it surpassed every single one.

All the food I had was simply magnificent: first, a wonderful disc of earthy, sweet black pudding, soft inside and caramelised outside, accompanied by a sweet apple compote. I’ve always loved black pudding, but this was up there with the best I’ve ever had anywhere. Then there was confit chicken with shallots, wild mushrooms and the kind of sticky jus which perfects any plate. And finally, I had a tarte tatin with wondrous, glossy ice cream, dark speckles of vanilla in every spoonful. The service, as in so many restaurants in Ghent, was welcoming, proud and infectiously joyful and – as in so many restaurants in Ghent – I felt like I had found my happy place. I sat on the banquette, looking out on another dark, clean, contemporary dining room full of hip urban types, and I raised a glass to Steve and his excellent advice.

I returned to Ghent in January 2019, and had a stupendous meal at a restaurant which really needs to be added to this piece. It was Michelin-starred Oak, and my food there ranked up with the best meals I’ve had anywhere. The welcome was perfect, service was silky-smooth, the room was comfortable and cosy without any sterility or stuffiness and the tasting menu was a series of wonders. From the beautiful amuse bouches to begin with (including a stunning charred leek dish) to barbecued pigeon with a deep beetroot cracker and red fruits, right through to a terrific granita strewn with punchy microherbs, it didn’t put a foot wrong. Truth be told, it made all the Michelin-starred meals I’ve had in the UK feel like a poor imitation.

Where to drink

I love a Belgian beer, although my tastes run more to lighter stuff like a kriek or a framboise. So I may not be the best guide for these things: no doubt there are all kinds of dreary beer spods who can steer you much better in Ghent than I could. They would probably direct you to places like Trollkelder and Rock Circus which pride themselves on doing a gazillion different obscure beers in a big laminated pamphlet, and they’d probably try to catch them all like Pokemon, but that really wasn’t for me. I did go to De Dulle Griet, a big old pub with rather eccentric decor which apparently has the biggest selection in all of Ghent, and I thought it was okay but I didn’t find myself drawn to going back. Maybe if they’d done more food than just pate and plastic-wrapped crispbreads I might have found it easier to get on board.

I did absolutely love Het Waterhuis aan de Bierkant, right next to the river, with its cosy upstairs room and its decor which slightly made me think “90s student party”: it wasn’t a million miles from the old Bar Iguana, to be honest. I very much enjoyed the extensive list of beers (bottled and on draft) and, of course lots of different fruit beers for me to try with almost no shame at all – although they always set them down in front of my other half instead of me, which is both sweet and very misguided. I was sorry only to go there the once during my trip, and almost as disappointed not to visit ‘t Dreupelkot, the jenever bar next door. There’s always next time.

Another regret was waiting until my final night to discover ‘T Einde Der Beschaving (which apparently translates as “The End Of Civilisation”: at last, a Brexit-themed pub!) on a square next to Gravensteen castle. It was a slightly dreich evening – a shame, because the courtyard outside would have been a lovely place to drink in more clement circumstances – but it was a lovely, snug place and the barman was friendly and welcoming and seemed genuinely delighted to have customers. A very nice older lady at the bar sauntered over, asked us many questions about the motherland and, at the end of the evening, offered us her email address for tips if or when (when, as it turns out) we came back to Ghent. It was that kind of place, and it might not have been the fanciest pub in the world but I liked it a great deal.

The main reason so few of those places got the time they might have deserved, though, was Café Gitane. Oh, how I adored that place: in the space of my time in Ghent it easily made it onto my list of my favourite bars in all the world, rubbing shoulders with exalted company like Paris’ Le Barav, Liverpool’s Petit Café Du Coin and Granada’s Taberna La Tana. It was as French as it was Belgian, actually, with cosy, dimly lit tables, blood-red banquettes and a black and white tiled floor. The beer list was big enough to satisfy my other half and had the sweet and drinkable Ter Dolen Kriek on it for me. The music was jazz just modern enough to still be enjoyable and some of the clientele, especially the lady at the bar one night who decided to start singing completely out of nowhere, were brilliantly bonkers. It was a charcuterie plate away from perfection, but every time I went there I was already so well-fed that none of that mattered a jot.

“I wish there was a bar like this in Reading”, said my other half. “A good beer list, table service, good music and no wankers.”

I nodded sagely, deciding that our home town could really do with an excellent Belgian beer café, or more specifically just Gitane. It might well be one of my first stops when I return.

No section on drinks would be complete without also briefly mentioning coffee. I tried a few places in the city but my absolute standout favourite, a stone’s throw from Gitane, was Barista Zuivelbrug, one of two branches in Ghent. I’m normally a latte drinker, but the combination of Barista’s excellent coffee and Belgian chocolate made their mocha an absolute revelation and I enjoyed it so much I didn’t even care how much it would appal the purists. They also did nice-looking pastries and lunches, but of course I was usually a pain au chocolat to the good by then.

What to do

Well, if you’ve made it this far then you’ve probably figured out that my main idea of things to do on holiday fits into the previous two headings. But I will say that Ghent is a wonderful place just to wander and take in, especially if you enjoy architecture, photography, combining the two or just plain people-watching. I did visit the Design Museum – the blurb says that it “makes you aware of the great impact design has on your daily life”, but it mainly made me aware that, as an experience, the Design Museum in London is much better, err, designed (nice building, though). I didn’t go in the cathedral, but like I said I did buy some very appealing chocolate from the shop next door. I know, I know, I’m an appalling tourist. Next time I shall go to the Museum of Contemporary Art (the wonderfully-named S.M.A.K.) and generally try a little harder.

The thing I really, really enjoyed in Ghent, though, was the street art. There’s loads of it, seemingly everywhere. On one of our first days exploring the city we crossed the river and wandered up some side streets, turned a corner and just found this staring right back at us.

Further research revealed that Ghent is in fact famous for its street art, all over the city, and indeed some of its artists. So we downloaded the street art map from the Visit Ghent website and went on a truly enjoyable odyssey round the city, hopping from location to location. Some were small, subtle pieces, and some were jaw-dropping: the whole side of a building transformed into a massive, vivid canvas. The trip took us out into the docklands, another part of Ghent I’d like to see more of, and incredible industrial buildings, glass bricks and converted warehouses, hip-looking cafes on street corners. Every single dot on that map offered something new, many offered something stunning, and I could quite happy have whiled away another afternoon seeking out the whole lot. The picture below of rabbits by Ghent native ROA was probably my favourite find, and if I thought it looked familiar it was probably because I’ve also seen his work in London.

Where to stay

I really lucked out by booking Snooz Ap, an apartment very close to the centre and just round the corner from Graffiti Alley, another street art hotspot in Ghent. It was muted, tasteful, spacious and warm with a huge comfy bed like a cloud and a walk-in wet room to die for. It even had brilliant catering facilities, which I imagine would have come in very handy for a fundamentally very different kind of guest to me, and fridges and cupboards for room snacks (please tell me I’m not the only person who gets room snacks on holiday). I got my room through booking.com, although you can also book direct through their website.

Well, there you go, that’s Ghent in a nutshell. Normal service will be resumed next week with a review of a Reading restaurant, and I’ll try my best not to bore on about how everything is better on the continent (I still remember coming back from my holiday in Bologna earlier in the year and realising, to my horror, that I’d become one of Those People). But in summary I loved the place, far more than I ever expected to, and I can’t wait to go back. I left with a heavy heart and took a train to Rotterdam, a very different city with its amazing, hypermodern architecture, Brutalist buildings, colossal indoor street markets, cutting-edge craft breweries and stunning small plates restaurants. But that’s another story.