Monica's Cheddar Cheese Popcorn: Day trip to Antwerp

I think many of you who read this blog realize I live abroad with my husband and furry (dog) child and have been for almost the past 3 years. Currently, we're living in a small city in The Netherlands that is very industrial and not very pretty. Along with this, the food is ...well, let's just say... lacking (I hear this is a general Netherlands issue, but recently I've been told of some great seafood places by the sea so we'll be tying those out soon!). Belgium is a mere 20 minutes drive from where we live, so we decided to head to the nearest (I think it's the nearest anyway!) metropolitan area, Antwerp for a day of sight seeing and decent restaurant-ing!

Before we left, we chose a restaurant using the viamichelin website... at first it seemed we wouldn't find anything as everyone was fully booked (we only made reservations the night before!), but after almost 10 calls we successfully secured a reservation at a french style restaurant. Turns out that they may not actually have had room for us as my husband overheard them chatting about not enough tables and the reservation written for tomorrow... but well, we got in! Here's our review:

De Reddende Engel in Antwerp, Belgium
The food was fabulous, but the service was poor. At one point during the evening, we realized we were the youngest people in the joint, which is a shame since the food was pretty tasty. I'm not exactly sure if they wrote us off because they considered us too young to appreciate the food, but I found it right up our alley. In particular, the waitress (or co-owner, couldn't really tell) didn't offer the cheese platter (I also didn't realize it cost only 3.50 euro more... what a freaking bargain!) which I just consider to be a lack of decent marketing skills. Additionally there were 2 desserts you could have with your fixed menu, but you had to order it at the beginning. I didn't realize this and also didn't understand her completely (also the menu was written in Dutch and French) when she tried to explain it (which was also odd because it seemed like she was in a rush even though the restaurant was mostly empty and were were the second couple of the evening!), but she never came back and asked us if we would like it. Rather we ordered from the standard menu.

The ambiance of the place was quaint and decorated with lots of odds and ends. From the reviews I've read online, many people consider it out of date. I didn't find these overly oppressive, but there were a lot of knick knacks that I'm not sure were actually being used. On the other hand, we realized towards the end of our day that Antwerp is a great antiquing area, so perhaps all their items have some significance.

Here are some food pictures for your (but mostly my) drooling pleasure. We both picked a preset (i.e. fixed) menu. I enjoyed mine, my husband was less pleased, but still satisfied. It turns out popular menu item was the bouillabaisse, it's such a shame that we didn't get it, but I suspect we'll be heading back to try it. From what we could see of other patrons, it looked fantastic with whole prawns and lots of traditional toppings to go along with it. Oh how I love french food!