The Best Cocktail Bars in Belgium

A cocktail bar planted defiantly in the heart of Belgian beer country, Botanical by Alfonse leans into herbs and botanicals the way a brewery leans into hops. The corner room softens its concrete floors with velvet banquettes, fresh greenery, and framed art, and in warmer months a little patio opens up outside. The menu rotates monthly, chasing seasonality and, apparently, the mood of the team making the drinks.

In a city where the default drink order writes itself, Bar Ran has quietly decided cocktails are the point. This neighbourhood cocktail bar runs a menu called Chroma, where each drink is keyed to a colour, and the team grows their own herbs and makes ingredients in-house. Funk and disco handle the playlist. The room is loose and unhurried, the kind of place you stay longer than planned.

Cocktail glasses chilled to -25°C before anything goes in them tells you where this Antwerp bar's head is at. BelRoy's Bijou distills its own spirits and bottles its own cocktails, so the house pour here is the house, full stop. Tapas come out to keep things going, but drinking is the point. It's a stylish room that takes the glass seriously without taking itself too seriously, which in a cocktail bar is harder than it sounds.

Dogma calls its menu "dandy drinks," which turns out to be accurate rather than just cute. It's a cocktail bar on a quiet Antwerp side street that treats the classics as starting points, nudging a Negroni sideways with Amer Picon and building from there. Fresh oysters and a cheese-and-charcuterie board give you a reason to stay past the second round. The 50 gave it a Discovery nod, and the crowd seems quietly pleased with itself for having found it.