Antwerp’s Jewish quarter starts where the trains stop. The streets south of Antwerp Central Station, Pelikaanstraat, Hoveniersstraat, Lange Kievitstraat and the blocks towards the Belgiëlei, hold about 30 synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher grocers and bakeries for a community of some 20,000 people. Before the Second World War the city had about 35,000 Jews; 65 per cent of them were killed in the Holocaust. Many of the survivors and the families who came after them rebuilt their lives around the diamond trade, a few streets away.

Two religious councils keep the rules. Machsike Hadass serves the Haredi, strictly Orthodox community; Shomre Hadass, led by Chief Rabbi David Moshe Lieberman, is closer to modern Orthodoxy. Between them they certify the butchers, bakers and restaurants. Since 1 January 2019 Flanders has banned the slaughter of animals that have not first been stunned, a ban the European Court of Justice upheld in December 2020, so the meat and poultry in Antwerp’s kosher kitchens are imported.

For a visitor the most useful rule is the calendar. Kosher kitchens close for Shabbat, from Friday afternoon until Saturday night, and most of the places below close on Friday and Saturday or stop serving at lunchtime on Friday. At Hoffy’s, Sunday lunchtime is the busiest of the week.

Hoffy’s, Lange Kievitstraat

The Hoffman family has fed the quarter for three generations. Pinchos Yisroel Hoffman, a survivor of Mauthausen, arrived in Antwerp after the war and started by selling fish door to door; the shop moved to Lange Kievitstraat in the 1970s and is run today by Yossi Hoffman and Chaim Hoffman. In 1985 three of his sons, Yanky, Yumi and Moishi, opened a takeaway and restaurant across the street from it, under the supervision of Machsike Hadass. It nearly closed in 1992; their father talked them into carrying on, and into inviting non-Jewish customers in.

The counter is Ashkenazi home cooking with a Hungarian accent, from the mother’s side: schnitzel, gefilte fish, stuffed peppers, kishke, sautéed liver, cholent on Fridays, and a long vegetarian list for the Belgians who now ask for one. Yumi Hoffman runs a tasting room for tour groups. A Belgian television documentary in 2018 brought in more of them. “We always had non-Jewish customers and groups here, but that made an explosion,” Moishi Hoffman, the cook, told the magazine Mishpacha in 2023. He co-wrote the family’s cookbook, Hoffy’s: The Jewish Kitchen, and explained the point of it there: “It is a cliché to say ignorance breeds contempt, but it’s true, and so we want to invalidate it.”

Start here. Hoffy’s is the kitchen in the quarter that set out to feed outsiders, and its tasting room and its cookbook exist to explain the food to people who did not grow up with it. The family’s other shops, the fish shop and a kosher grocery run by the eldest son, Aharon, are on the same street.

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Kleinblatt, Provinciestraat 206

Kleinblatt is a bakery with a neon sign and more than a century behind it. Jacob Kleinblatt and Rifka Rosenfeld opened the first one in Poland in 1903. Their sons Hirsch, Moishe and Abraham came to Antwerp in the early 1920s; Hirsch and his wife Regina baked at Wipstraat 11, while his brothers worked in diamonds until the crash of 1929 sent them into the bakery. Since 1931 it has been at Provinciestraat 206, run now by the founders’ great-grandchildren under Machsike Hadass. The counter holds rye and challah, babka, bagels, sesame bread, Sachertorte and the cheesecake people drive in from other cities to buy. Hoffy’s serves Kleinblatt’s pastries for dessert.

Falafel and the Appelmansstraat

Beni Falafel, at Lange Leemstraat 188, is the quarter’s vegetarian lunch: falafel in pitta, hummus plates, soups and shakshuka, which the kitchen will make without egg on request. It appears on the Shomre Hadass kashrut list, closes on Saturdays and has closed for part of the summer in past years. It is a short walk from the Belgiëlei, where several kosher butchers and grocers trade.

For a proper dinner, the Appelmansstraat, in the diamond district, has Eighteen at number 21: a meat restaurant under Shomre Hadass with French and Middle Eastern dishes, a sushi list and a private room, open at lunch and dinner from Monday to Thursday and on Sunday evenings. Two doors along, Taim Taim Taim at number 25 serves Israeli food.

Confetti’s, at Lange Herentalsestraat 12, cooks Italian food under kosher supervision. It serves lunch and dinner from Sunday to Thursday and closes for Shabbat, which makes it an Italian restaurant that is shut on Saturday night.