207 Best Restaurants in Belgium

This sprawling brewpub-restaurant is pretty much the city's old standby for when you've run out of ideas. It's particularly good for families, it's always packed, the menu is littered with Flemish favorites (carbonnade, meatballs, vol-au-vent), and the service is impossibly quick no matter how full it is. A lot of the food is slathered in the house beer (typically Con Domus and Nostra Domus), which funnels directly from the neighboring brewery into the restaurant. You can even get guided tours and tastings for €11. If you're there for the food, stick to the Flemish classics for a solid meal.

A 15-minute walk from the Markt, this informal Belgian café-restaurant attracts a roaring crowd—a legacy of being just a few doors up from one of the city's busier hostels. The menu changes regularly, although the food inevitably veers toward the comfort variety, with some excellent stews (like its simple but winning pot-au-feu) regularly cropping up. In a city where restaurants don't need to try that hard to find business and aren't afraid to charge for the privilege, Lion Belge is inexpensive, consistent, and friendly.

With a name that means 11th Commandment, and an interior crammed with more than 600 plaster saints and angels salvaged from old churches, this café enjoys a prime location, tucked into a tiny street between the Grote Markt and the cathedral. The food and drink are straightforward but hearty, with a lunch menu focused on club sandwiches and croques (pricier full meals are served in the evenings), and you can sit on the terrace in the shadow of the cathedral.

For those who love fancy dining in epic surrounds, this restaurant occupies a former trading hall of the neo-Gothic stock exchange building, which dates from 1872. In contrast to the historic setting, the pan-global dishes are ultramodern works of art on a plate---prepared in the open kitchen on one side of the hall, their names derive from their geographical inspiration: a riff on a ceviche, for example, might be called "Lima," while a pasta-based dish might be titled "Florence."

Despite its minimal signage, Fin de Siècle holds to that peculiarly obstinate breed of restaurant that flourishes despite itself. Its brown interior, big communal tables, and hearty cooking---stews smothered in beer-infused gravy, sausages atop heaving mountains of stoempe mash, and the odd North African influence---has ensured a healthy popularity and lively spirit. Covid finally forced them to get a reservation system, but in a city of old-school estaminets trying to out-tradition each other, Fin de Siècle is the eccentric granddaddy of them all.

It divides opinion (as this hotly debated topic often does), but this is an outside shout for one of the best frites kiosks in the city. Locals who know tout it as such, and who are we to disagree? Certainly, the long queues at this historic crossroads between Chaussée de Waterloo and Chaussée d'Alsemberg (at one time a medieval toll point on the road out of Brussels) is proof enough, and the taste or sauce selection is not in doubt.

Brussels may be the Belgian city best known for its frites, but that hasn't stopped this high-end Dutch friture from muscling in. Created by three-star Michelin chef Sergio Herman, its Antwerp branch was the first in Belgium (now in Ghent and Brussels), and its elaborate sauces, from "deep truffle" to seasonal specials like "olive and Catalan cream," make it something special. If you're looking for dinner, be aware that this place closes at 7.

The city isn't short of food halls, not since Wolf opened in the center, but out in Laeken, where the options are not nearly as interesting, this addition was a godsend when it opened in the Tour & Taxis center in 2021. The choice here errs on the side of crowd-pleasing, ranging from the smash burgers and frites of "140" (the perfect temperature for cooking fries) to "sausages from around the globe" at Saucisses. The space is huge and you're not short of options.

It's a bit of a walk from the center (about 20 minutes) to get there, but it's worth it not just for the food, which lies at the more educated end of traditional Belgian comfort food (think thick cuts of meat slow-cooked for 24 hours, flaking off the bone into beery sauces), but for the setting. Located in the Vaartcom area, a once run-down industrial and brewing site resurrected into a trendy dining and shopping area that spills into the neighboring park, Gastrobar Hop lies in part of the old Stella Artois brewery. Its vast collection of craft beers powers a seasonal set menu that cherishes the simpler things and relies on local brewers and producers.

The setting is everything here. The beautiful terrace, on the doorstep of Ooidonk Castle, makes for a delightful retreat for the walkers, cyclists, and day-trippers that make up the clientele. Its menu is a solid mix of brasserie standards with a few twists, including an Ostend-style fish stew, truffle-flavored croque monsieur, and a game ragout. Be warned though: it stops serving dinner at 6:30 pm, so it's one for early birds. 

The iron framework of the 19th-century Maison du Peuple, a building designed by famed Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta, supports this brasserie. It siphons a hip crowd from trendy Hopland Street and keeps a sunny feel with large mustard-yellow industrial beams and windows all around. The kitchen sends out brasserie favorites like Aberdeen Angus rib steak and frites, as well as tempting contemporary dishes with lighter wraps, bagels, and salad options for lunch.

A really friendly café that's just a few steps from the Beaux-Arts. It's got a good choice of vegan and vegetarian sandwiches, croques, soups, and salads, and the juices are delicious. 

While tours of the Grimbergen Abbey brewery aren't possible, you can taste the fruits of its labor at its brasserie in town, which is slightly more upmarket than you'd imagine. A pretty terrace overlooks the abbey, while the food served is unrepentantly Flemish: beery stews, grey-shrimp croquettes, Oostend-style fish stew. Everything on the menu, unsurprisingly, has a suggested beer pairing, as if you needed an excuse to try any of the nine varieties on offer. The quadruple weighs in at a hefty 10% ABV, so it may be a sleepy bus journey back.

Drop by Het Groot Vleeshuis (Great Meat Hall) for coffee or lunch and a little shopping. The wood-beamed hall dates from the early 15th century and was used as a covered meat market. It's an impressive blend of ancient and modern; the metal-and-glass restaurant has been cleverly constructed without affecting the old hall itself. Both the shop and restaurant focus on East Flemish specialties such as Ganda ham, local mustard, and O'de Flandres jenever. The food hall is open Tuesday--Sunday 10--6.

Aptly named, The New Eelhouse specializes in various preparations of sweet-fleshed eel, along with grilled turbot, sole, scallops, and myriad other crustaceans, including lobster and mussels (in season). Fittingly for an Antwerp landmark, the restaurant has dark wood and a comfortable, deep-rooted air.

A cozy little Italian lunch spot with a specialty in piadina wraps, typically stuffed with cheese and cured ham. It has a good selection of drinks, too. 

This modern café-restaurant with a prime spot on the main square serves pan-European dishes, but with a notable Italian slant that also spills over into the wine list. The long, narrow design of the sleek interior feels a little like dining in a train carriage, but grab a spot on the terrace and you can contemplate the strapping features of Celtic warrior Ambiorix as you eat.

A self-declared "vegetable rotisserie," the imaginative prix-fixe menu dangles a mostly pescatarian collection of disparate ingredients, spanning fruit, veg, and fish that somehow come together on the plate to create tiny edible jewels. Yes, they might spit-roast the odd cauliflower, but the ethos here is as much about market-garden ingredients awash in lacy foams and flavorsome sauces. The stylish red-brick interior, hidden away on an otherwise nondescript street, makes it feel all the more like you discovered a secret in St-Gilles.

This distinguished restaurant is a local favorite for French and classic Belgian dishes, particularly seafood and seasonal specialties. Its tasting menus are on the steep side, but the service is uniformly excellent and the presentation borders on the inspired. Sip your aperitif on the terrace overlooking the garden, which also supplies the herbs used in the kitchen. 

A large, hip coffee shop with art and design books strewn around its cozy lounging area. There are bagels, salads, and the juices are particularly good. Wi-Fi is best nearer the counter, though.

This busy café-bar is found deep in the hipster spawning grounds of Mechelseplein, and while the menu is limited to a half dozen Flemish and French crowd-pleasers (beef carbonnade/stoofvlees, vol-au-vent, and the like) and burgers, it executes them extremely well. High, ornate ceilings, a long bar, and closely packed tables help perpetuate the communal vibe that carries most evenings along. It's a very chill spot, and the beer selection is pretty good.

A bustling little coffee shop that's usually packed with gossiping, bitching politicos—which is always entertaining to overhear—because it just edges the European district. The bagels are fresh and rightfully celebrated, while the coffee is first-rate.

Kline's concrete, brutalist interior reflects the shock-and-awe spirit of its location on fashionable Rue Antoine Dansaert. It's certainly a palate cleanser for the often delicate fare that arrives on your plate. Offering a refined locavore's take on old-school comfort food, its open kitchen and back-to-basics design is more of a clue to chef Nico Corbesier's zero-waste approach, squeezing everything out of his ingredients. Simply named dishes such as glazed slow-cooked bacon and pickles, or the poetically named "The first of the mushrooms—the last tomatoes" move with the seasons and belie the skill with which they're crafted.

Spring rolls are the specialty at this über-popular fast-food café beloved by local office workers, though the fillings are hardly traditional: meat loaf, crispy bacon and avocado, caramelized tofu. There are a few locations in the city now (the original opened in Saint-Gilles), but this is the perfect snack stop for shoppers on Rue Antoine Dansaert. 

This beloved local favorite lingers on a busy street of cafés behind the Oude Markt. Its small terraces and ethical approach are popular lures, with most of its coffee beans directly sourced from the farmers. You can also buy its own roasted blends in-house.

Expect beautifully prepared dishes served in an elegant mansion house on the Grote Markt. Everything about Kokarde screams good taste, especially the menu where dishes of cod and ceps (wild mushrooms) in truffle butter mingle with scallops and pork cheek. The set menus are also good value for what you get. 

The main menu is more polished than you'd expect, dishing up soups, burgers, and salads, as the odd cultured surprise, but you come here for the titular croquette (breadcrumbed parcels of potato and various fillings). These come with several wild stuffings, ranging from carbonnade flamande (beef stew) to the classic grey shrimp. Order a few for an indulgent pit stop.

Although it has similar signage to the neighboring hotel, this fine bistro is wholly independent and a real bright spot on the dining scene. Attentive staff and a studious menu that services the best of Belgian bistro fare prove a worthy combination. Sole, lobster, game, and veal come prepared with no little skill and given a fine-dining twist.