Antwerp for foodies

Best restaurants

Antwerp's restaurant map is not a fine-dining map: it is a working port city's map, which is more interesting. Twelve picks here cluster around Groenplaats, the Oude Koornmarkt, Reyndersstraat and the Vlasmarkt, which is to say within ten minutes' walk of the cathedral and the river. The cooking is, predictably, all over the place: Korean fried chicken, Neapolitan slice pizza, ramen pulled to order, Belgian café food, Turkish all-nighters, two Greek tavernas that do not pretend to be each other, waffles served as a meal, a fusion room with a Wikidata page, Vietnamese summer rolls, Thai wok, a sit-down Italian that still keeps a midday break. None of these rooms are trying to win a star; most of them are trying to feed people who live in the 2000 postal code and the visitors who wandered in from Grote Markt. That is the bar. The list is built for someone who has one or two evenings in the centre, wants to eat something specific rather than safe, and would rather know the hours and the address than read another paragraph about atmosphere.