Walvis opened in 2016 on a wedge-shaped corner at Walvisstraat 1, by the Dageraadplaats, as the second café from the owners of Vitrin. Its windows run down both sides.
Category: 🍴 Restaurants
Find the best restaurants in Antwerp with our curated selection of dining experiences. From local Belgian cuisine to international flavours.
Esco*Bar: a Chilean living room by Antwerp Central
Vicky Calderon Escobar named her café on the Quellinstraat after her second surname and filled it with her father’s Chile. Some fifteen years on, it still serves breakfast and lunch six days a week.
Fiskebar keeps its fish European on Marnixplaats
Fiskebar has served fish from a former fishmongers’ shop on Marnixplaats since the company behind it was registered in 2006. Only European fish and shellfish make the menu, and guidebooks keep naming the bouillabaisse.
Hertog Jan cooks two weeks a month in Antwerp
Gert De Mangeleer and Joachim Boudens closed their three-star Hertog Jan near Bruges in 2018. Since 2021 it has run at Botanic Sanctuary in Antwerp: 22 covers, two stars, half the month.
Chocolate Nation, opposite Centraal: a million visitors and no subsidy
Chocolate Nation opened opposite Antwerp’s Centraal station in 2019, cost €11.5 million of private money and passed one million visitors in October 2025.
Zilte went from two people in Mol to three stars on top of the MAS
Viki Geunes and Viviane Plaquet opened ‘t Zilte in Mol in 1996, just the two of them. Thirty years later it holds three Michelin stars on the ninth floor of Antwerp’s MAS.
The Jane leaves the chapel for a warehouse on the Eilandje
Nick Bril spent ten years cooking under an 800-kilo chandelier in a former military chapel. He moved The Jane to an 1895 dock warehouse in 2025, and Michelin gave it two stars there by May 2026.
Antwerp kosher food: five addresses south of the station
Antwerp’s Jewish quarter, south of the Central Station, feeds a community of some 20,000 people and closes for Shabbat. Five kosher addresses, starting with a family that has sold fish on Lange Kievitstraat since the 1970s.
Dôme in Zurenborg: the rotunda is a brasserie again
The Café du Dôme was built in 1893 and won a Michelin star under Frédéric and Evangeline Chabbert. Now the rotunda serves onion soup at €16, and the fine dining has moved down the road.