I am very determined to put Belgium on tbe international YELP food circuit!…read more Friends brought us here as their specialty and longtime favorite place to eat in the seaside city of Oostend on the North Sea. It is an old world style restaurant similar to a pub and beer is definitely the thing here. They have a beer menu to make your head spin and spew pea soup trying to decipher. But, it is all excellent. The meal started with an amuse bouche, a seafood and mayo delight. There are also so many food choices that it is hard to select. Our friends recommended a seafood salad. It's a large tomato cored open and stuffed with tiny shrimp. There's endive and a light sauce. These shrimp are a type of delicacy. They are taken from the sand by horses pulling them out with some type of catch basin. It takes a very long time to shell these tiny creatures. They don't look particularly appetizing on a plate but they do taste good. As with any dish it came with fries, these were perhaps the best I've had so far. Plump and fried just right. I tried a local dark beer and it was excellent. For dessert I just had a coffee. The service was excellent. Friendly and very helpful. There's a hotel here as well. We were here at an off hour for lunch but imagine it fills full with locals and tourists alike.

This has been my favorite hang out for well over 15 years now. I do not longer live in Oostende,…read morebut when I did I would come here at least weekly and take all visitors. They have an impressive and entertaining beer menu where you can read the flavour and pick what you like. I am not so much a beer drinker but the Lindemans Kriek (cherry beer) van 't vat is the best in the world. It just tastes better than anywhere else I had it, don't ask me why. Once I organised an event here and they were so nice to let us use the upper floor for this. Great variety jenevers also, and in the winter I find the hot chocolate with amaretto quite the bargain. Table service can take a while but then you just go up to the bar... This is my favorite bar in the world. Also just the right noise level to still be able to have good conversations. I miss it. I want to go NOW!

Every wannabe North Atlantic resort has a strip of restaurants along its docks or oceanfront…read moredesigned to lure in the sparse and unwary tourist trade. Most of the establishments are adequate, but not very good. A few are excellent, but indistinguishable in their faintly forlorn facades. In Oostende, the strip runs from Visserskaii around to Vindictivelaan (a foreboding name, if ever there was one, for a restaurant row). The last time we were here, on a bitterly cold January afternoon, all of the brasseries were empty, except for 't Waterhuis, which barely fit us in. Apparently, this fishing port's locals, when given the choice of meals out, favor pasta over seafood, and that is what they serve here. The sauces are more Flemish than Italian, with strange ingredients like curry powder and mountains of an indeterminate rough-ground cheese. The food is actually quite good, if not great. The house itself was another matter. Built a few centuries ago to sell that most precious of seafaring commodities - fresh water - to passing trawlers, it sits on a vast, empty cistern. The water taps have been converted into light fixtures. With its dark Flemish decor and pleasant, if hurried, staff, it makes a warm refuge from the ugly weather outside.

Situated in the old part of the town, this place has literally not changed from the day it opened -…read morea looong time ago. Even the music is from the sixties. Otherwise, it has its oswn atmosphere and gets quite full during weekends. They have an own concoction that is based on Gueuze beer and armagnac. Quite good - but careful, this is strong stuff!

I've never seen a menu that was half an inch thick before, this was definitely a first for us! The…read moremenu includes food, drinks, and multiple languages, which explains its impressive size. With so many options, we were excited to explore what they had to offer. Today, we ordered the onion soup, shrimp and cheese croquettes with salad, rabbit with potato croquettes, and the beef stew with fries. Both entrees also came with apple sauce, which was an interesting and surprisingly good pairing. The ambiance is warm, cozy, and inviting, and the service was great. The portions were generous, and most of the dishes we tried were delicious. The beef stew was the highlight of the meal. The meat was incredibly tender and packed with flavor. Eating it with the apple sauce created a nice balance and kept the dish from feeling too heavy. The rabbit was also very tender, it looked similar to a chicken thigh and drumstick, although you can definitely tell the bone structure is different. The apple sauce paired nicely with the rabbit and added a great contrast to the flavor. The shrimp croquettes were tasty, but the cheese flavor was not my favorite. The onion soup was also very different from the traditional versions we're used to. It had a strong, unusual flavor that felt a little harsh and even gave a slight burning sensation in the throat, so it wasn't my favorite dish.

We trained from Brussels to Bruges for the afternoon and I love finding myself in towns where I can…read morereally see myself returning, places where you feel off the grid in a really nice way. We'd planned to have dinner here but did not make a booking and really lucked out with the last table open when we came in. Please, ensure you make a booking if you want to dine here. I had no idea how consistently full they'd be and felt grateful the entire time to have snagged a spot. When I tell you my fish stew has to be one of the top 5 things I've ever eaten in life, I am not kidding. It was so spectacular. I had no idea what to order and asked for a recommendation and this was it. This soup blew my mind, spoonful after spoonful it was the yummiest, most delish, comfort meal I've had in a long time. We had a very and tasty experience. Highly recommend.