The best gastranomic restaurants Belgium

Located on the banks of the Meuse, near the marina, this Michelin-starred restaurant offers a unique setting. Contemporary architecture and interior design use aluminum and wood as the main materials. Creative cuisine is served here, with meticulous presentation: chef Julien Wauthier offers pleasure to the palate and the eye. The menu features noble products such as scallops, game and offal such as sweetbreads and veal cheek. The terrace on stilts and the riverside garden are sure to tempt you on sunny days.

Here is a young, welcoming and inspired house that offers fresh and light cuisine... well in tune with the times and the flavours of the moment. The chef, Alain Morillon, concocts little wonders of French cuisine in the "gastronomic" vein. The menus change every two months to keep up with the seasons and the products are as organic and local as possible. Everything is refined, from the decoration to the cooking and the prices have never killed anyone. The address, all in simplicity and humility, is really worth the detour.

Taken over at the end of 2023, this institution of Liège's gastronomic landscape has benefited from a refreshment while retaining the unique style of the place. The traditional Art Deco brasserie is unique in the region. The kitchen offers a variety of lobster dishes. The menu evolves with the seasons. The seafood platter features oysters, clams, mussels, langoustines, half clams, shrimps and periwinkles. You'll also appreciate the shrimp croquettes, considered the best in the city, as well as the genuine Liège coffee.

You'll love this gastronomic restaurant with its classic setting, and especially the garden where you can enjoy lunch or dinner when the weather's fine. French and Belgian cuisine are perfectly balanced on a menu of refined seasonal dishes. Each month has its own unique menu. There's also a fine selection of beers and cocktails. Au Beau Jardin also offers a more economical brasserie side with more rustic, local cuisine. You can sample the daily suggestion or choose from a selection of salads and snacks.

This is the most casual of the Botanic Sanctuary restaurants. Its location in the building's orangery with its terrace overlooking the interior garden already sets the tone for the cuisine: natural and fresh. And that's exactly what you'll find on chef Wouter Van Tichelen's plates. The star product is the fish. We enjoy a turbot grilled to perfection with, in season at the time of writing, green beans with almonds, apricots, lovage, mushrooms and a superb sauce of green tomatoes in Madeira. It is fine, racy and the service is impeccable.

Wine bar and caviste at the front, high-flying restaurant at the back, Sans Cravate invites you into its chic country-style dining room. Both classic and inventive, it's clear to see that chef Henk Van Oudenhove is having fun in the kitchen with a champagne sauerkraut garnished with mortadella and confit pork cheek. How original! He's also a king of sauces (watercress with garlic cream to accompany white fish, for example). A real treat, of course, with a superb wine list and Véronique's warm welcome.

Chef Alexandre Ciriello is on a roll: awarded the title of Young Walloon Chef of the Year by a famous culinary guide at the end of 2022, he opened L'Horizon in a building with large windows in the Brabant countryside, with his parents by his side. The menu is divided into "universes" (cold savoury, hot savoury, sweet, cheeses) and you can choose your menu according to the formula you have chosen. Don't miss the tarte de Chaumont-Gistoux, a house specialty featuring crab, caviar and sea urchin. Fine, precise cuisine with Asian touches.

Nestled in a beautiful old manor house, Le Pavot offers a range of flavors as seductive to the eye as they are to the taste buds. The chef's inspirations are French, with dishes such as a poached egg flavored with morel mushrooms, rack of pork on curried carrot mousseline and hazelnut crumble, smoked fresh trout aspic with sweet-and-sour vinaigrette and horseradish cream, and beer-braised cabbage stuffed with poultry and buckwheat. A fine cuisine to be enjoyed in a convivial setting, with a seasonal menu.

Ivresse is a wine shop, a caterer, but also one of the most exciting restaurants in the south of the capital. You enter via the wine shop side and its wall of bottles before entering the room which is rather in the industrial/recup spirit. In the kitchen, the chef Benjamin Rauwels proposes a restricted menu but whose products have been carefully selected (local, seasonal, organic). It is impossible to know in advance what you will eat, but vegetables have a large place, without forgetting fish and meat. And let's not talk about the accompanying wines, as a wine merchant is obliged to do!

In the house once owned by his parents in the Plante district, Charles Jeandrain offers gourmet cuisine based on seasonal produce. The hyper-trendy decor is the opposite of the classic style of yesteryear. On the plate, haute cuisine: lobster rubs shoulders with sweetbreads, Iberian pluma, langoustines, turbot and oxtail. The chef also offers Belgian "ocietra" caviar, served with cauliflower, lemon and bread. Reservations recommended. Take-home store and classes to reproduce.

Tero is a coherent model that links healthy products (meat and vegetables) that come from their own farm in Rochefort, with creative gastronomy based on flavours and seasonality. The consistency continues with the sleek and dynamic setting that wraps around the central bar while fitting perfectly into the three levels of the space. On the menu are thirty or so small hot and cold dishes, mezze style, to share or not, and at lunchtime a vegetarian or meat lunch. On all levels it is refined, original and delicious. Another address in Bierges.

50 metres from the Boulevard du Souverain, a typical early 20th century house in the commune, between the Tenreukens park and the Soignes forest, with a breathtaking view of the pond. The Niels family runs the establishment with brio, in addition to the Vieux Saint-Martin in the Sablon and the Canterbury in Ixelles. Here too, the menu is exclusively à la carte, so it's not surprising to find brasserie dishes as well as more creative suggestions, all based on exceptional products. This is the family's DNA. Heated terrace all year round.

This Casanova will charm you in an instant! This gourmet restaurant on the seafront overlooks the beach and the North Sea, where the products are magnified on the plate. Start with prawns (fresh or in croquette form), continue with Ostend-style plaice or North Sea bouillabaisse, and finish with a soft chocolate fondant, all served in a bright, contemporary room lit by sunshine and hints of orange in the decor (I hear this color whets the appetite).

The name has a double meaning: barge, to evoke the old quays where the restaurant is located, or is it the grain of folly of Grégoire Gillaert (the chef) and Barbara Hoonaert (the sommelier). The very raw room (exposed brick walls, wooden tables) fits in well with the philosophy of the chef (who can be seen cooking behind glass): to highlight the nature of each product, according to the seasons. The result is colorful, gourmet dishes that are just right. The wines selected by Marie Houx, the new sommelier, also hit the mark.

This young restaurant (opening in 2019) is headed by a young chef, 30-year-old Maxime Van Bellingen. A young team is on hand to serve you in a beautiful dining room that's both rustic with its wooden furniture and contemporary with its exposed brick walls. Maxime's background is in fish, and it shows! He pays great attention to seafood. Everything is extra fresh, in season, local whenever possible, and the dishes are a feast for the eyes and taste buds. A breath of fresh air on the local culinary scene!