The Best American Food in Belgium

The open kitchen runs entirely on fire, so you watch everything get smoked, roasted, or grilled from your seat. Flamme is a buzzy gourmet bistro in Saint-Gilles where vegetables take the lead, treated with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for meat. The menu is short, which sounds easy until you're actually choosing. Let the front-of-house guide your wine; regulars say she's never steered anyone wrong.

Quite Frankly is a lunch-only sandwich shop in Antwerp with a diner-meets-deli look, down to jars of pickled onions the size of small appliances. Trays of meat wait behind the counter for their turn in springy bread, and the pastrami is smoked in-house. Nobody asks how your day is going, which saves time, and the sandwiches come out quickly and are heavy enough that dinner becomes optional.

Tap Out is a smash-burger joint dressed as a spaceship, with brushed chrome on every surface and an open grill where patties get flattened and onions cook down until the whole room smells like them. Expect paper-wrapped burgers, a fried chicken sandwich with a tempura-style crust, and skinny fries you'll order without discussing it. It's casual and cheap, so come hungry, not dressed up.

A restored farmhouse barn outside Dinant where the daily menu is read aloud rather than handed over on paper. This is a country restaurant built around regional produce, and it holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for doing so without making you feel like you've wandered into a lecture on terroir. The cooking is confident and unpretentious, the kind where the side dishes pull their own weight and the sauces have clearly had some thought put into them.

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.

The wood-smoke hits you before you reach the table, which tells you most of what you need to know about Ember. This set-menu restaurant in Mechelen is built around live fire and grilling, with produce from the kitchen garden pulling serious weight alongside the meat. The team runs a zero-waste kitchen, and the cooking leans acidic and a little unpredictable in the best way. The non-alcoholic pairings are a genuine reason to skip the wine list.

A fireplace-grill dominates the center of the room, hunting trophies line the walls, and sheepskins drape the chairs, which should tell you everything about the register here. This is a meat-forward grill restaurant in Genk where the kitchen takes the BBQ seriously and the menu runs long. The crowd is loud in the best way, and regulars tend to arrive with an appetite rather than a reservation strategy.

A dry-ageing fridge sits behind glass at the centre of the room, and at Wagyu, that's less decor than a mission statement. This chic BBQ restaurant in the heart of Durbuy is built around prime beef, wagyu and other premium breeds, cooked over fire and served with bold sauces and sides you pick yourself. A few fish dishes appear on the menu, but nobody here is pretending this is the point. Carnivores only, dressed a little nicer than the grill implies.