If you’re here for the Edible Reading Bruges city guide, and you’re reading this, it means you need to be a little patient – a brand new expanded and updated 2026 Bruges city guide will be published on the blog on Friday 17th July.

Back in the mists of time, in the prehistoric year that was 2018, Ghent was the first ever city guide I wrote. I went in a drizzly October week and, despite that, it completely won me over. It had gorgeous winding lanes and modern architecture, brown pubs and craft beer, excellent coffee, really cracking restaurants and street food, superlative baked goods and street art everywhere you looked. I loved it and I resolved to go back, although Covid conspired to prevent it for another four years.

When I went back I did it, as I always have since, as part of a two centre holiday with Bruges. It’s easily done: the two are less than half an hour apart by train. The problem was that the next time I wrote a city guide to Ghent, it shared the billing with Bruges, and I have been back to Bruges far more often since than I have to Ghent, despite loving the city. And over the years, with one thing or another, Ghent has increasingly felt like an afterthought. Which isn’t fair: it deserves more than that.

So this time round I have finally got rid of the uneasy cohabitation and separated them out. This guide covers my old friends and new discoveries from a very happy visit to Ghent in 2024 and the Bruges stuff – I’ll stop using the B word now – can be found elsewhere. When I visited Ghent in 2024 the thing that surprised me the most was that the secret seemed to be out. I wasn’t used to seeing crowds of tourists in Ghent, but on this occasion they seemed to be everywhere, and I thought that perhaps a city that had always flown under the radar was finally getting some recognition.

Quite right too. If you’re a photographer, it has some of the best buildings and architecture you can find – all the pretty stuff, but plenty of contrast too. You can do a street art tour of the city, using a map you get from the tourist office, and if you like this sort of thing – as I do – you can spend a very enjoyable few hours ambling and snapping. Ghent is a university city and, like many other great university cities – Montpellier, Bologna, even Oxford – that means it has a vibrancy, edge and lack of stuffiness that other, more conventionally beautiful cities might envy. Not naming any names.

Although I haven’t included the places from my 2018 guide, because I’ve not been back since, many of them are still alive, kicking and well worth a visit: spots like Oak for Michelin starred dining, Du Progres for unbeatable chateaubriand (Du Progres will never go out of fashion because it doesn’t care about being in fashion) or Himschoot for outrageously good pastries.

And although this guide might be small, don’t be deceived: it is mighty. I’ve had few meals as good on my travels as the one I had at Roots, only a handful of European cafés anywhere I’ve been were as enjoyable to sip and people watch in as Take Five Espresso. And two of the bars in this guide – Gitane and Django – are two of my favourite places to drink in twenty years of travelling Europe being an attempted flâneur, and eight years of writing about it. It really is a wonderful place, and saying this makes me want to go back sooner rather than later. On its own, not sharing the limelight next time.

1. Roots

Roots, sadly, closed at the start of July 2026. The owners are opening a new restaurant, Klaar, on Donkersteeg on 24th August.

Roots was one of my favourite finds of last month’s trip to Ghent, a small and exceptionally tasteful restaurant in the Patershol district, possibly the prettiest part of the city. It’s a really beautiful space, the staff speak the kind of English that made me ashamed of my nonexistent Dutch and the lunch menu, a crazy forty-five or fifty-nine Euros for three or four courses, is an utter bargain.

I loved everything I had on a beautiful fish-led menu to the point where it was difficult to single anything out. But a langoustine tartare served on little lozenges of toasted brioche, like an open sando, was simply terrific. So was deft and delicate sea bass with potatoes and a leaf called bulls blood, which was a new one on me. But even better was a precisely cooked piece of ling with whey, draped in lardo, crowned with broccoli and striped with an intense, deep sauce.

Throw in an exemplary cheeseboard and a dessert of pear, chocolate ganache, chicory and caramel and you have as good a lunch as I can remember in Belgium. The fact that the room is so gorgeous was just the icing on the cake, as was the presence of a very agreeable-looking courtyard for the summer months. When I go back I’ll have dinner there and do it properly, but it will have to go some to top this magnificent first impression.

Roots
Vrouwebroersstraat 5, Gent
https://rootsgent.be

2. Boris & Maurice

Boris & Maurice was the Ghent restaurant I expected to adore, but merely came away really liking. It’s in Sint Amandsberg, a suburb out to the east a short bus hop away, in an area which is resolutely for locals and not tourists. In case you’re wondering, that’s a good thing: I loved the fact that the wait staff told us they didn’t have any English language menus, not realising that if anything that was a draw rather than a disincentive.

It is – as seems par for the course with Ghent restaurants – an impossibly stylish place full of impossibly stylish people, and if we got the least appealing table, nearest to the door, it merely proved to me that they had no intention of lowering their standards. Fair play to them for that. The restaurant has connections to a place, now long closed, called Bodo that I ate at and loved in 2018, and the menu is every bit as tempting as Bodo’s was: not masses of options, just a handful of snacks, three starters, mains and desserts and a cheeseboard to choose from.

Much of what I had was gorgeous, from bone marrow with gremolata and sourdough toast to a veal tartare with anchovy tapenade and capers, all the way through to a spot-on onglet with béarnaise, frites and something which was referred to as “spicy salad” (it wasn’t, really). All that makes the menu sound very robust and meat focused, which is unfair to the place because there was also white asparagus, hake with brandade, sea bass carpaccio with fennel vinaigrette. I just wasn’t in that mood when I went there, so I can’t tell you about those.

What I can say is that my dessert – rhubarb on crushed sablé Breton, punctuated with citrus and moated with crème anglaise, an upside-down crumble – was one of the nicest things I ate all week, and a dish I thought about a fair few times the next day. Other than that I found Boris & Maurice more amiable than exceptional, but I’d still go back. Especially because, as you’ll see shortly, it’s a brief walk from the most amazing bar.

Boris & Maurice
Antwerpsesteenweg 329, Gent
https://boris-maurice.be

3. Aperto Chiuso

Although Aperto Chiuso has been on my Ghent to do list for some time, I only finally managed to tick it off last month. It was open on Monday evenings, which many Ghent restaurants appear not to be, and the dining room was packed when we took our table at half seven. It’s on the beautifully named Sleepstraat, which is the road where Ghent stops being pretty and starts feeling gritty, and I’ve noticed it before because of the front half of a Fiat 500 gazing out of the window.

Inside the dining room is all dark muted tones – I love the picture of the Last Supper on one wall, looking down on the diners – and the menu looks a darned sight more authentic than many Italian restaurants you find both in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe. Interestingly it offers antipasti, starters and desserts yet all but one of the main courses were pasta dishes – almost no secondi here, and no pizza.

Everything we tried was utterly glorious, offering that comfort which Italian food brings quite unlike any other. It was a drizzly night, I felt a bit jaded after three consecutive evenings of boozing on Belgian beer, and Aperto Chiuso turned out to be exactly what I needed. Bruschetta came as little canapés topped with tomato and mozzarella, red pesto, anchovy butter. Burrata, so often derided in the U.K., was superb with blood orange, toasted hazelnuts and coriander seeds and an olive oil infused with lavender and honey.

And then my main course was the best spaghetti carbonara I’ve ever had – not a white creamy blob of blandness but a bundle of beautifully al dente, top quality pasta hugged by a a thick, mollifying sauce of egg, bacon, parmesan and nothing else. Honestly, it was as close to a panacea as I’ve ever found in a bowl, and when I’m in Ghent again I will eat it again. All that and a stonking house red for a ridiculous four Euros a glass: I wandered back down Sleepstraat well-fed, full of carbs and ready for a little sleep of my own.

Aperto Chiuso
Sleepstraat 82, Gent
https://apertochiuso.be

4. De Rechters

Still my favourite place in Ghent for traditional Belgian food, De Rechters is a contemporary-looking restaurant which is far better than it needs to be given its plum spot next to St Bavo’s Cathedral. When I visited in 2022, I got to sit outside in the sunshine and it made a good meal, if anything, even better. We drank Orval, and Zoë pointed out to me that her beer and mine were bottled on different days, which explained why mine was fizzier than hers: I love it when she goes full Raymond Babbitt about beer like that.

Never having had moules in Belgium – I know, such an oversight – I had some as a starter, cooked simply with thyme and they were plump and fragrant. But next time I’ll go the whole hog and have them as a main with garlic and cream, which for me is the only way really to eat moules, dipping your bread and frites into the sauce until you are truly replete.

The frites, incidentally, were a bit wan on that visit – which is a shame, because frites are something Belgium does better than practically anybody. But the stoverij, beer slow-cooked in beer until the whole thing is a symphony of dark brown, almost-sweet ambrosia, is worth the price of admission alone. You can get frites anywhere but beef like that requires patience and skill, both of which De Rechters has in abundance.

De Rechters
Sint-Baafsplein 23, Gent
https://derechters.be/nl/

5. STEK

STEK, in between the centre and Sint Pieters train station, is a lovely little cafe and a perfect spot for brunch, a meal which Ghent, in my experience, does better than Bruges. On a previous visit in the summer I sat out on their gorgeous terrace and enjoyed an exemplary avocado toast with crispy bacon, a splendid latte and a great dose of people watching.

This time around the less clement weather meant I could sample their indoors, a very tasteful space full of cool people and foliage – not necessarily in that order – and very friendly and attentive service. The coffee was as good as I recalled, the fresh lemonade with ginger was a sinus-tickling treat and the lunch game was, if anything, at a higher level than before. I had a potato salad with hot honey smoked salmon, caramelised onions, yoghurt dressing and pistachios which felt relatively virtuous while tasting a little sinful. I got there just before noon and grabbed pretty much the only table which wasn’t either occupied or reserved, so it might be making a lunch reservation online if you fancy giving STEK a go.

STEK
Nederkouter 129, Gent
https://www.stekgent.be

6. Take Five Espresso

I really loved Take Five when I visited Ghent in 2022, and on last month’s visit I was there every morning without fail for a latte, to sit inside at those big windows and enjoy what could feel like Ghent’s single biggest sun trap. The coffee is exceptional, the service is brilliant and they play effortlessly cool jazz – as you’d expect from the name – to soundtrack the start of your morning. The pain au chocolat from Kultur next door are so good that I’ve never tried Take Five’s food, but if it’s as good as their coffee it would be a treat indeed.

I follow Take Five on Instagram and there’s something about some places you visit on holiday that means you feel invested in them long after you have headed home with a heavy heart. So when I heard that Take Five had been so successful that they’d expanded and taken a second site across the city, I was as happy for them as I would have been any Reading-based business. But the original branch on Voldersstraat, with its beautiful tiled floor and its soothing, sophisticated atmosphere, will always be my first port of call.

Take Five Espresso
Voldersstraat 10, Gent
http://www.take-five-espressobar.be

7. Café Labath

According to their website, Café Labath was the very first third wave coffee joint in Ghent, opening twelve years ago. And I felt like I could sense that when I stopped there for a latte, that this was a place that didn’t feel the need to try too hard, that was comfortable in its own skin, knew what it was about and had nothing to prove. That showed too in the beautiful space they had created, all parquet floor and Ercol-style chairs, making best use of the corner plot and the huge windows to allow the very best people-watching experience. I loved the way that, as with Take Five, the public seating outside had been worked into the space, giving multiple options for al fresco drinking in better weather.

If anything, the less calculated interior led me to underestimate the coffee, but when my latte – ordered through a QR code at the table with no need to queue – turned up it was creditable. I had only stopped at Labath on the off chance to grab a quick shot of caffeination before lunch in the area, but when I return to Ghent I plan to have a far more leisurely drink there.

Café Labath
Oude Houtlei 1, Gent
https://www.cafelabath.com

8. Clouds In My Coffee

Clouds In My Coffee is one of the most stylish cafés I’ve seen in over a decade of going to Europe and seeking these places out. Quite aside from the Carly Simon reference, which manages not to be naff, the inside is truly gorgeous, like something out of Living Etc. From the street it looks small (and is surprisingly hard to find) but through the back is a wonderfully light, airy extension and beyond that another of those idyllic secret gardens that Ghent cafés seem to all have up their sleeves.

Did I want a coffee? Absolutely. Was my latte delicious? Of course it was. Did I look at the menu and wonder if it was too early for an Aperol Spritz? You bet I did. And did I feel like I was soaking up design tips for the duration of my visit? Yes, along with thinking Why doesn’t Reading have anywhere like this? The only drawback is that Clouds In My Coffee is the epitome of the best house on a bad street: Dampoort, where it lives, is an up and coming part of Ghent that, from my visit, has more upping and coming to do (the cafe’s website calls it a “multicolour fuse”, which I think is nicely poetic). The walk there from the tram stop involved walking through an Aldi car park and, for an awful moment, I thought I’d wandered through a wormhole in space and found myself on the outskirts of Basingstoke. Still worth a visit though, if only to go somewhere that fitted in about as much as I did.

Clouds In My Coffee
Dendermondsesteenweg 104, Gent
https://www.clouds9000.com/en/cafe-gallery

9. Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant

On my first visit to Ghent, at the tail end of autumn 2018, I rather liked Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, a tall building by the canal (aren’t they all?) with rooms across several floors: the room right at the top reminded me of mid-90s boho drinking culture in a way which somehow summoned up memories of Bar Iguana. But it wasn’t until I went back on a hot July afternoon in 2022 that I really got what the fuss was about – sitting at a sunny table, overlooking the canal, surrounded by other afternoon revellers of all shapes and sizes it was an extremely agreeable place to while away a few hours and sink a tall, cold Brugse Zot on draft. We don’t have a word, really, for what time spent like that is like but I believe the Dutch describe it as gezellig.

Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant
Groentenmarkt 9, Gent
https://www.facebook.com/Waterhuis-aan-de-Bierkant-171209319595287/

10. Dulle Griet

There are two very traditional beer places in Ghent with enormous lists, the kind of places CAMRA types hit up on a tour of the city. One is Trollkelder, which I’ve never really taken to – I had a drink outside it once but was faintly perturbed by the models of trolls in the window, glaring at you as you sip your beer. But Dulle Griet, named after a character called Mad Meg from Flemish folklore, was more my sort of thing.

On previous visits I’ve had a drink outside in the front room and enjoyed the idiosyncratic decor: just look at all the random shit hanging from the ceiling. But I now realise that didn’t really do it justice, and on my most recent trip we had a few drinks there in the evening, sitting in a little booth out back, admiring the way any good Belgian bar covers every inch of wall space with signs, mirrors and memorabilia from the country’s seemingly limitless roster of breweries.

The beer list is indeed extensive – around 500 different options, apparently – and so intimidating that it makes the Little Bear’s look like a pamphlet. Prices are elevated compared to their neighbours in Bruges too, with many of the beers a few Euros more expensive (in fairness I’ve never settled up at the Little Bear without thinking is that all?), but I’d say it’s worth it for the experience. I was there on a Thursday night when the place was rammed, and when I gave up my plum spot left before closing time, knowing that I had packing and an early checkout in my future, I felt something of a wrench.

Oh, and however hungry you are, don’t order the cheese. I don’t know what that stuff is, but it’s not cheese in any meaningful sense.

Dulle Griet
Vrijdagmarkt 50, Gent
http://www.dullegriet.be/en/

11. Gitane

Gitane remains my favourite bar in Ghent, and one of my favourite bars in the whole wide world. When I went to Ghent in 2018 I fell completely in love with it, although when I returned in 2022 it was in the summer, the whole world was sitting outside and being at the only occupied table indoors felt a little bit forlorn and neglected.

Well, I don’t know why I thought that, because returning last month I was reminded of just what a wonderful place it is. It’s all panelled walls and red banquettes – I know I overuse the word “conspiratorial” to describe places like this, but I’m yet to find a better word. It’s louche without being sleazy, dimly lit without being dingy, and I like it a great deal. It helps that the beer list is good too – a model of pared-down focus compared to the bloat of places like Dulle Griet, but with a great yet compact selection including options from less widely seen breweries like Brouwcompagnie Rolling Hills and the always excellent De Leite.

Gitane
Meerseniersstraat 9, Gent
https://facebook.com/100054309860476/

12. Django

When I booked a table at Boris & Maurice, in Sint Amandsberg, I thought it would be nice to have a pre-dinner drink in the area. And the only thing I could find that was suitable, really, was a bar just over five minutes away called Django. We’ll go there, I thought. How bad can it be? And I love it when this happens, because it was the find of the holiday.

It was so louche, so hip, so suitable for nighthawks that it made Gitane look like the Hope Tap. From the red lighting to the formica topped tables, from the leather booths out back to the neon sign on the wall, from the wood-panelled bar to the textured concrete ceiling with a mirrorball hanging from it, it was an interiors nut’s Christmasses all come at once. It even has an upstairs balcony floor, nearer that mirrorball, where you can look down on all the ineffable coolness below. Why had I never heard anybody talking about this place, or ever seen a review anywhere? It was almost the perfect bar.

All it needed was great drinks. Except it transpired that they had those too, with brilliant Belgian pale Ouwen Duiker and iconic Tripel Karmeliet both on draft. The barman even apologised for bringing the latter in the wrong glass, something you would only ever hear in Belgium. So really all it needed was great food – but the local sausage with mustard, yours for three Euros, was coarse and unbelievably delicious. To think people in the U.K. get all excited about a packet of Tayto: they must be laughing at us on the continent. And although I didn’t get to try it Django also did a very attractive range of pizzas – just looking at the menu made me want to cancel my dinner plans.

Next time I go to Ghent I will spend a whole evening here, although if I do I may be sorely tempted to go the whole hog and move to Sint Amandsberg. I wonder if Ghent needs an itinerant restaurant blogger?

Django
Antwerpsesteenweg 330
https://www.instagram.com/djangogent/?hl=en-gb

13. HAL 16

HAL 16 is the craft beer capital of Ghent, a combination of food hall and tap room for local Dok Brewing out in the docklands, about ten minutes from the centre by bus or twenty on foot. It is honestly one of my favourite places in Ghent and since discovering it I’ve never visited the city without giving it a try. My first visit was in January 2019, when I think it had just opened, but it and the complex around it have gone from strength to strength on every successive visit.

I turned up on a Wednesday evening around 6 o’clock after buying some beer at the excellent De Hopduvel just around the corner, and the place began to fill up almost immediately after, the long tables being taken by group after group of young, cool, happy urbanites. None of them were saying dreary stuff like “but it’s a school night”, and they were probably drawn by the colossal range of beer on offer. Thirty lines on keg, many of them by Dok Brewing but with a number of guest beers including stuff you just wouldn’t otherwise see. On my most recent visit I got to try a sharp, peachy sour by tiny Trial & Ale Brewing, from Edmonton, Alberta, and I really loved it.

But the booze isn’t the only draw, because HAL 16 also has three terrific food traders to make sure you stick around. One, Officina Raffaelli, does pizza, pasta and antipasti and the stuff I’ve had from them has been decent. A second does burgers, and I’m sure they’re excellent, although I’ve never tried one. But the reason for that is that the third trader, RØK, does some of the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten – better than anything in the U.K., and for my money better than Copenhagen’s Warpigs. In the past I’ve raved about their pork chop, rhapsodised about their lamb neck.

But on this trip, although I liked my confit duck leg and absolutely adored Zoë’s beef rib, smoked for 10 hours, the standout dish was a vegetarian one – cauliflower, brick-red and sticky with a savoury marinade, its perimeter blackened and crispy from the grill, the whole plate festooned with a zigzag of curry mayo. Even writing this makes me hungry and sad because we only ordered one dish of it, shared it between two and then moved on somewhere else. This is how you get people to become vegetarian, by offering something this good so everyone wants their own, reluctantly sharing some beef rib into the bargain just to keep up appearances.

HAL 16
Dok-Noord 4b, Gent
https://www.hal16.be

14. Stadsbrouwerij Gruut

Gruut is the city centre’s only working brewery. It’s far more central than Dok Brewing and far more trad – they serve an amber ale, a blonde beer, a wheat beer, a brown ale and a triple and that’s it, no sours or lambics or more esoteric stuff. And they have a rich brewing heritage – their little booklet shows you that founder Annick De Splenter, who began the business in 2009, comes from a veritable family tree of Belgian brewing expertise.

So it might not surprise you to hear that it’s a really lovely, quirky and slightly eccentric place to while away some time. I tried their amber ale, which I really enjoyed, on a quiet weekday afternoon when the weather wasn’t quite nice enough to take advantage of their outside seating: a British delegation, seemingly from CAMRA, were camped outside before 2pm waiting for the place to open and had no such qualms. It’s a lovely place and I could happily have dallied there longer but I had places to go, food to eat, other beers to drink and, ultimately, a guide to write. Plus they charge you fifty cents to use the loo, according to one of the signs, and who carries cash any more?

Stadsbrouwerij Gruut
Rembert Dodoensdreef 1, Ghent
https://www.gruut.be

(Click here to read more city guides.)

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