After spending a bit of time in lovely Ghent, I got to move on to Antwerp, Belgium's second biggest city. I wouldn't say it's as much of a gift to the plant-based eater as Ghent, but there's no shortage of good places to get good vegan eats.
My first stop was Spritz, a vegan Italian restaurant on a popular street in the centre of Antwerp. It has a big outdoor terrace, so if you're there on a sunny evening - like we were, happily - that means you have a great spot to watch people strolling up and down or admire all the beautiful old architecture that Flemish parts of Belgium seem to have in abundance.
Spritz's menu is short and sweet - a handful of classic Italian pastas made vegan. If you're of a mind to eat alfredo with a cashew and cauliflower base, or spaghetti and meatballs, or a spot of herbivorous carbonara, Spritz has got your back.
On the day we visited, my top choice (the alfredo, obviously!) had run out. Boo! But the special of the day was spinach and tofu ricotta cannelloni - which is probably one of the few pasta dishes I love even more alfredo.
In the plus column: the food was really good. Mr Flickingthevs had the meatballs, which were several orders more tasty than the average mock-meatball - they weren't quite enough to make me shift my devotion from cannelloni, but great nonetheless.
In the minus column: it took ages to get our food. We were waiting for the best part of an hour, hungrily eyeing up the delicious looking plate that were being delivered to tables nearby. I was big-eyed with sadness and jealousy as it got closer and closer to closing time, and I got hangrier and hangrier.
The pasta, when it came, was great, but at that point I was hungry enough probably would have eaten by own socks and thought they made a decent meal.
How could Spritz redeem itself? With dessert, of course. Spritz has tiramisu on the menu, and if I was choosing my last meal, I'm pretty sure I'd finish up with tiramisu.
Spritz
+32 471 29 52 88
Oude Koornmarkt 11, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
When I visited Belgium, it was in the middle of a heatwave. What do you need to do if the sun is shining down unceasingly? Head to the nearest ice cream shop. And Antwerp really does have a good one in the form of Ice Lab, an all-vegan, all delicious gelateria.
As well as having an entirely vegan array of ice cream flavours, it also does all sort of lovely-looking sweet treats, like Belgian waffles with cloud-like mounds of Chantilly cream.
On a boiling afternoon, though, we were after the classics. I realise that picking your favourite ice cream flavour is a bit like picking your favourite child, but if I was forced to choose, I'd probably pick coffee with apologies to rum and raisin. I don't think I've ever seen a vegan rum and raisin ice cream, and I've almost never seen a coffee one, so you imagine how my heart leapt to see one in Ice Lab.
I seized on my chance to indulge the happy part of the Venn diagram were coffee and ice cream overlap and this was the result. I'm happy to saw it tasted just as good as I'd hoped.
Ice Lab
Oudevaartplaats 38 2000 Antwerpen
info@icelab.be
+32 3 275 91 55
Mr Flickingthevs has a long and enduring love affair with cinnamon rolls. They're one of his favourite baked goods. So, when we were strolling around Antwerp and stumbled on a branch of Have a Roll, every so often he would try and work a visit into our itinerary for doing tourist stuff around the city.
The baked goods gods were clearly against us: every time we turned up at the store, we were too early or too late, or we'd just turned up on a Monday, when the Antwerp branch is closed. On our last day in the city, we hit paydirt: we arrived and the shop was open and heaving with various flavours of cinnamon rolls.
Have a Roll has all manner of cinnamon rolls, with toppings that range from the traditional to the fancy.
On our visit, there was a choice of nutty options pistachio or caramel-pecan, or something more fruity with apple, classic with vanilla frosting, or altogether more playful with espresso powder or cookie dough. And if that wasn't enough to give you decision paralysis, there's always a new flavour of the month - apricot when we visited.
I can normally take or leave a cinnamon roll. They're always a bit heavy and one-note, I thought, the sort of thing that will sit on your stomach aggressively for hours. Have a Roll happily blew up all my cinnamon-y preconceptions by being both light and sporting a perfect ratio of dough, icing, and toppings. I've never been happier to be proved so wrong.
Have A Roll
Oudaan 15/31, 2000 Antwerp
info@havearoll.com
I'm always so excited to see ice cream flavours that are more exciting than just fruit and dark chocolate. And vegan ice cream cones too! It looks like a good haul of food.
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