The Best Places to Eat in Antwerpen

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

1. Le Fooding Le Fooding Guide

The counter seats overlooking the open kitchen are the ones to grab at this vegetarian neighbourhood eatery in Antwerp, which holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The chef builds a plant-based, shareable menu around spices and umami balanced against bright, acidic notes, with a New York loft energy that feels less earnest than the genre usually manages. Vegan, unfussy, and easy on the wallet.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The vol-au-vent and dame blanche on the menu look like they haven't changed since the 1960s, which at Ciro's is exactly the point. This is an old-school Belgian brasserie on the Amerikalei, all nostalgic interior and proudly patriotic cooking, the kind of place that makes Antwerp feel like it still belongs to itself. The Michelin Guide gives it a Bib Gourmand, and the room fills fast, so book ahead.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The orange façade on Sint-Bavostraat is hard to walk past without stopping, and the inside follows through with vintage frescoes and black-and-white tiles lit just right. This is a classic Belgian restaurant, the kind that still serves brains with gribiche and eels in sorrel without any irony. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a couple running it who clearly know what they're doing.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A terrace on the Vlaamse Kaai is one of the better reasons to be in Antwerp's Zuid neighbourhood on a warm evening. Bistro Glass is a cosy, elegant French-leaning bistro where the kitchen draws from both Eastern and Western traditions with enough confidence that the combinations feel inevitable rather than restless. The front-of-house runs warm and attentive, the kind that makes you order one more glass without noticing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The smoke hits you before the menu does, which is pretty much the point. Black Smoke is an Antwerp barbecue joint with a dim, rough-edged interior and pitmasters working in a Texan tradition, though Latino touches and Belgian sourcing keep things from feeling like a theme park. The drinks list runs nearly as long as the food, so settling in for a while is the implied agenda.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Half the dining room faces the open kitchen, and the other half looks out over the Antwerp docks, so there's no bad seat. Cella is a stylishly converted warehouse on the water, the kind of industrial space that sounds cold until you're actually in it. The menu swings between charcoal-grilled aged meats with hand-cut fries and international turns like ceviche, the chef's sauces tying everything together with more confidence than the menu's range might suggest.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The 1913 Art Deco bones of a Zurenborg townhouse set the tone: marble staircase, velvet curves, the kind of room that makes you sit up straighter. De Aarde is a modern French restaurant where the chef brings an Asian undercurrent into classically generous cooking, so a butter sauce arrives laced with kombu and pigeon gets a shoyu koji marinade before hitting the wood fire. Rich, bold, and unapologetically big-portioned.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room at Decan runs in black and white, a nod to chef Jan Decan's second life as a pianist, and the cooking follows a similar logic: classical French structure with modern touches slipped in. This is a polished, sit-down restaurant where the front-of-house knows the wine list cold and will actually steer you somewhere interesting rather than just upselling. A place where the room and the plate feel like they were designed by the same person.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The Art Nouveau neighborhood of Zurenborg is an odd place to feel sea salt in the air, yet this seafood bistro pulls it off. The open kitchen keeps things honest, with langoustines on the teppanyaki and briny platters that suggest the North Sea is closer than it is. Nothing here is fussy, which seems to be the whole point: very fresh fish, direct cooking, and olive oil doing more work than any reduction ever could.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Old maritime photos cover the walls of this classic Antwerp seafood restaurant, and the kitchen has apparently not seen a reason to change much since it opened, which is a compliment. The menu runs to sole Véronique and eel in green sauce, the kind of dishes that show up in Belgian cooking textbooks and taste better here than the description suggests. Straightforward, unfussy, and very much the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A restaurant running out of a sailing association workshop on Antwerp's left bank, where the room itself doubles as a gallery of art installations telling the stories of the staff, all recent arrivals to Europe. The chef builds a menu around local and vegetable-forward cooking that somehow also lands a gumbo of manioc leaves, dried fish, and oxtail squarely in Ethiopian territory. The food and the mission are genuinely inseparable here.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A street art fish mural covers the wall at this laid-back Antwerp bistro, which sets the tone nicely. Small sharing plates roam freely between cuisines, cured meats next to vintage sardines from the tin next to prawns in kimchi-pineapple sauce, the kind of menu that keeps you ordering one more round. The room runs warm and convivial, and the cooking follows suit, unfussy but carefully sourced.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 19th-century rotunda in Antwerp's Zurenborg district houses this classic French brasserie, its walls layered with old photos and cooking utensils the way a Parisian grandmother's kitchen accumulates decades of useful clutter. The menu runs the Gallic greatest hits, foie gras terrine, regional poultry, and a chocolate tart that regulars order before they've sat down. Open nearly every day, which in Belgium counts as a civic virtue.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Sergio Herman's Italian-leaning restaurant sits in Antwerp's fashion district, where a cocktail bar runs along the front and an open kitchen anchors the dining room at the back. The vibe skips the red-checkered tablecloth clichés entirely, landing somewhere between American diner cool and Tuscan ease. The kitchen pairs Italian instincts with Belgian coastal ingredients, the kind of pairing that quietly makes more sense than it has any right to.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A medieval mansion dressed up in cosy, contemporary style, Nage is a creative French restaurant where the kitchen tilts classic technique toward something more quietly surprising. The chef leans on good ingredients and lets an unexpected note or two do the convincing, wild garlic turning up where you might not expect it. The natural wine list is a serious point of pride. Lunch is à la carte; evenings flip to a set menu only, so plan accordingly.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A terrace across the street and a wine bar upstairs: Pazzo spreads out like it owns the neighbourhood, which, after this many years on Oudeleeuwenrui, it more or less does. The kitchen splits its loyalties evenly between Italy and France, cycling through market-driven plates that treat the main ingredient as the point rather than the occasion. The wine list is taken seriously, and the upstairs bar has enough personality to justify a second visit on its own.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Perched on the Scheldt waterfront at Ernest Van Dijckkaai, this modern restaurant wraps so much glass around you that the river feels like it's in the room. Charcoal sketches by Rinus Van de Velde hang against a sleek interior, which is a nice counterpoint to a menu that leans into crowd-pleasing classics. Fried sole, generous portions, and a terrace that empties slowly even on cold evenings.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The terrace catches a direct sightline to London Bridge, which explains the name and gives the room its anchor. This is a modern French restaurant where the chef folds international instincts into cooking that still feels comfortable rather than restless. The à la carte and set menus run long enough to be genuinely confusing, but the front-of-house team guides you through without making you feel like a student. The wine list rewards people who ask questions.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the MAS museum tower and the marina beyond, which does a lot of the heavy lifting before the food even arrives. This Eilandje brasserie runs a menu loose enough to hold sole meunière, lobster linguine, and chicken gyoza on the same night without apologizing for any of it. Cocktails and tapas ease you in, and the interior is all plush surfaces and low light, the kind of room that makes everyone look like they had a good week.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

An open grill and warm industrial bones anchor this Antwerp steakhouse in Antwerp's Zuid district, where the room does a lot of the work and knows it. Dry-aged cuts arrive from Belgium, Austria, Spain, Denmark, and Japan, and when the kitchen is focused, the fire cooking shows real depth. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tells you the concept has weight. The crowd is stylish and the atmosphere genuinely magnetic.

1. World's 101 Best #74 · World's Best Steak Restaurants