I'm so glad we decided to dine at Bistro Jacob during our stay in Antwerp.
It's very close to the center of town and was just a short and scenic walk from our hotel.
We made a reservation for 7:30 or something in that neighborhood and we were seated amongst other tables of people seemingly enjoying their meal so I would recommend reserving a table to play it safe.
The staff were awesome and very nice.
Everyone at the table ordered the asparagus soup if memory serves which I was aggressively eyeing but decided instead to go with their goat cheese salad. I heard favorable reviews from my co-patrons regarding the asparagus soup but my salad was fantastic. It was presented beautifully with a nice hunk of goat cheese spank in the middle, sitting on top of a bed of dressing, greens, salad accompaniments like nuts, olives, veggies, etc. This was a very solid salad.
For our mains, one of my co-diners ordered the salmon, another the pasta pesto with scampi, another the carpaccio with pesto spaghetti, and I the tagliatelle with arrabiata and scampi without the sacampi. They had ONE vegetarian pasta on the menu with mushrooms which was suggested to me however I strongly dislike mushrooms so this was a no go. They kindly gave my shrimp to the person who ordered the pesto scampi for double the scampi.
My pasta was DELICIOUS and served under a few handfuls of arugula. The noodles were perfectly al dente and the sauce was super flavorful. I could eat that every day. I heard good reviews from my companions regarding their meals however the carpaccio was not much of a hit.
They have a gin and tonic menu BTW, GF ordered one with rhubarb fever tree tonic (I may have just made part of that up) and really enjoyed it. I had another variation in one of their house cocktails which was refreshing.
For dessert, we shared a tiramisu which was standard fare aka delicious.
Service was excellent, food was delicious, and the meal was quite a success. read more