The people of Antwerp revel in their food and drink with good reason, not least their exquisite chocolates--one of the best shops is Günter-Watte (right) on Steenhouwersvest--Belgian waffles and hearty Flemish farelike waterzooi and carbonnade stews.  At lunch people nosh on a smos sandwich, whose name means a "mess," an expected outcome of eating many layers of bread and garnishes.

    Everywhere there are “bruine (brown) cafés,” whose name may refer to the brownish color they acquire after decades, or centuries, in existence. One of the most famous is Den Engel at Grote Market, dating to the 15th century.  Café Kulminator lists more than 700 beers in inventory.  And if you’re a gin drinker, pace yourself at De Vagant (below), which stocks 300 kinds.

    The oldest restaurant in the city—Est. 1750—is the seafood-centric Rooden Hoed, whose six mussel dishes are ranked among the best in this mussel-mad city. But on a recent visit I found it a poorly run, badly serviced tourist spot that served a bowl of mussels in which many came with their shells shut, a sure sign they were dead before they hit the cooking pot. Only a pig's knuckle dish was as good as it was huge. I was also alerted by locals that the well-known Het Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment) next to the Cathedral is not as good as it once was and may be reserved just for a peek at the interior arrayed with religious artwork and a Trappist Westmalle dubbel beer.

    De Groote Witte Arend dates to 1488 as a convent, but since 1976 as beer hall and restaurant, now owned by Tim and Ronald Ferket, who serve up very hearty Belgian fare like beef stew with potato croquettes, sautéed plaice with mashed potatoes, a loin of pork and some delicious eel baked in cream. They carry 280 beers.

    More contemporary spots have gleaned a lot of global cuisines, as has Horta (right), just down the street from the Rubenshuis museum.  It’s a massive place set on two tiers, with outdoor dining, and the menu is just as large, with few dishes that are truly Belgian. That said, I did enjoy the crisp and meaty shrimp croquettes and a tempura of shrimp. A slice of foie gras was good and a traditional waterzooi made with tender chicken was both delicious and abundant in size, accompanied by a robust bottle of Rodenbach beer.

    Certainly the most impressive meal I had in Antwerp was at the restaurant in the newly opened Franq Hotel, where I also stayed. Quietly located on a street away from the city center and overlooking a lovely garden with one of the city’s oldest houses at the end, the hotel has all the modern amenities and a splendid lobby (left), though some rooms are small. The restaurant is very bright at lunch, with superb modern lighting, and the outdoor tables are becoming equally popular. 

    Chef Tim Meuleneire, formerly at the highly regarded Restaurant De Koopvaardij in Stabruek, Belgium, is proving himself one of the best in the country with a light cuisine based on the season’s best provender, beginning with the fat white asparagus that were then at their sweetest in May, with a browned gratin of parmesan cheese and a slick of olive oil (right).  Red gurnard and razor clams were delicately poached in a dashi broth, while whitefish came with a spicy seasoned salad.  For dessert, the iced coffee was a perfect midday sweet.

Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Two-course lunch €35; dinner €65.

    Graanmarkt 13 is also a new spot, set downstairs from a market square near Rubenshuis, functioning as a store, restaurant and apartment in a building designed by one of Belgian’s finest architects, Vincent Van Duysen. The seductive lighting in the main dining room gives way to a tiny outdoor patio with a single Godot-like tree (left).

    The menu by Chef Seppe Nobels revels in vegetable dishes and is set each week, with a few choices focused on lamb or Dover sole or whatever the chef wishes to make that night, which will include herbs from his rooftop garden.  I enjoyed a very pretty carpaccio of beets, as well as Little Gem lettuce with a dash of hoisin sauce and lime. Then a plate of fat Dover sole simply sautéed in butter. A lamb fillet in puff pastry was accompanied by rhubarb and a perfectly rendered reduction of its juices. A pork belly with fennel-flavored sausage had plenty of richness, accompanied by braised spiced carrots.  That night they were serving three raw milk cheeses from the Schoonvliet dairy in Beveren, one of them voted the “best bleu in the world.”

    Nobels is also having fun with a food truck for fine fast fare, parked right outside the restaurant upstairs.

Open Mon.-Sat. for lunch and dinner. Lunch €35, dinner €45. 

    Overlooking the River Scheldt, RAS (right) is atop the Zuiderterras project designed by Flemish Master Architect Bob Van Reeth, who began it in the 1990s and has altered and restored it several times since. As RAS, it is the work of the architect firm Co.Studio. I tell you all that because it is a very pleasant outdoor place to dine, all very modernistic and sleek, but the menu is a fairly standard rendering of contemporary global cuisine, with a slight nod to Belgium found in the shrimp croquettes with fried parsley  (€16.50).
    Otherwise, as you enjoy the view and one of the many Belgian beers stocked there, you should be happy with dishes like a salad of Hereford beef carpaccio, summer truffle, rocket, parmesan and grilled pine kernels (€18); baby soles meunière with garden cress, mashed potatoes or French fries (€29.50);  and for dessert a Belgian chocolate mousse (€10).

RAS is very popular for all the visible reasons. I’d go back for a cocktail or a beer and some light food while watching the sun set over the river.

Open for lunch and dinner daily.

    It’s tough to argue with the good looks of Bagatelle, which for a decade now has been entertaining a young crowd as comfortable there in New York’s Meatpacking District as at the restaurant’s branches in St. Barth’s, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Dubai, Monte Carlo and elsewhere. The restaurants don’t all look exactly alike, but the whiteness of the dining room, the bistro tables and chairs and the highly eclectic art work are always part of the equation, and a dish you find on one menu you’ll likely find on another.

    At the New York branch, the people who greet you will be handsome, the waiters will be fast on their feet, and, depending on the hour, the canned music will be either pleasantly in the background or blasting you across the room.  On Thursday nights a deejay spins records from the eighties and nineties—always good to hear Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Paula Abdul’s “Ain’t Never Gonna Give You Up” and Hall & Oates’s “Your Kiss Is on My List” again!—and the tables are set with old LP records that serve as show plates.

    For all these reasons the crowd is going to include Gen-Xers and Millennials, with a smattering of Baby Boomers, who actually remember the eighties and nineties, and whatever remains of the wrinkly Eurotrash of two decades back. All the women look as if they took a long time deciding what to wear and what to hang from their ears, while the males in the room spiff up just enough to look faintly louche—three-day-growth beards being de rigueur, tattoos amply displayed.  Page Six still cares who ate there.

    So the food does not need to be all that wonderful in a place like Bagatelle, but owners Remi Laba and Aymeric Clemente have in recent years hired very serious young chefs who can buoy the staples on the menu while adding their own personality to the kitchen.  Truffles are a mainstay, caviar has its own section on the menu, and there is a $1,000 tower of shellfish as an appetizer—“24 oysters, 18 mussels, 18 shrimp, 2 whole lobsters, 1 lb king crab, tuna tartar, ceviche, poke salmon, 30g Imperial Osetra Caviar Petrossian, 6 shots of vodka.” A bag of the restaurant's own olive oil is also set on the table.

    Two years ago I applauded the work of a very promising young French chef at Bagatelle, and now I am equally enthusiastic about the new young chef, Andrew Riccatelli (left) who learned to cook alongside his Hungarian grandmother and in his Puerto Rican mother’s kitchen. His résumé includes stints at Bar Americain, Curate, Buddakan and Spice Market, so he shows a deft hand for various techniques and a good nose for spices.

The menu at Bagatelle seems summery year-round, but right now the season is at its peak of flavor, so the watermelon salad with cucumbers, candied pine nuts, ricotta salata and basil vinaigrette ($18) is a great choice as an appetizer.  So, too, hiramasu tataki with a yuzu glaze and pickled chilies with ponzu sauce ($22) shows that very fine sushi can be found outside of even the best Japanese counters around town. 

    Among the warm apps, I enjoyed a very interesting risotto of grains ($25), wonderfully al dente with wild mushrooms, shiitake crumble and basil. Inevitably there always has to be an octopus dish on any menu, which Riccatelli does à la plancha with Kalamata olives, Sherry, romesco sauce and Marcona almonds for texture ($28).  One of his own specials that night was foie gras in a red wine reduction with a cherry mostarda (MP), which proved that foie gras need not be too heavy for summer.

    Bagatelle also has pushed its shaved truffle dishes, whether or not truffles are in season, so, although the pizza with black truffles, crème fraîche, black truffle oil and smoked mozzarella ($29) is pleasant enough, the truffles don’t add much to the mix.

    Lotte, also called less elegant names like monkfish, goosefish, bellyfish and angler-fish, is prized only for its tail, which has a texture and taste not dissimilar to lobster, and Riccatelli’s is a sterling example of how good it can be, blackened and served with a shishito succotash and corn cream ($32).  Pan-seared scallops ($48) took on a bit too much smokiness to my taste, but the rest of the dish’s components—caramelized peaches, bacon lardons and a cashew cream—all made perfect sense.  Do order the Aligot cheese-rich pomme purée ($12) on the side. A couple of tablespoons per person is richly satisfying.

    Mediterranean-style, spiced, marinated lamb chops ($69) were of fine quality, served with cranberry beans, chickpeas, mint and a fiery harissa (left), while a roasted chicken (half $45, whole $79) gets the truffle treatment. The skin is crisp, the meat juicy and it comes with potatoes, caramelized baby onions, button mushrooms and a thyme-laced chicken jus (below).

    Bagatelle is a place where you want to indulge in desserts—there’s a $100 plateau of all of them for the table and an éclair tiramisù for five at $49 that’s a pretty good price.  Otherwise, all the desserts are $16, including a meringue with mango confit, crispy mix, and Tahitian vanilla cream; an apricot confection with jam, short bread and almond sauce; and an “explosion” of chocolate with dark and milk chocolate, lime and crunchy salted pastry (below).  There is also a selection of cheeses for $20.

    The wine list looks impressive—pages and pages of very expensive French wines, not all of them with listed vintages. There appear to be more pages of Champagnes than anything else, and the least expensive wine I could find was $65 for some blah whites from the Pays d’Oc. Some of the whites are over the hill, too.

    It’s easy enough to be dismissive of the vibe at Bagatelle, but it’s equally easy to get into the high spirit of it. Good looking people, a lively bar, splashy artwork, lots of Champagne and very good food make it as much fun as it is a true taste of the Mediterranean. 

Open nightly for dinner.