A wonderful tour along Pure! hotspots in Ostend was on my program last weekend. It was a great example of the delicious food which can be tasted during the food festival A L’Ostendaise, which starts tomorrow! A L’Ostendaise is a culinary event to promote sustainable fisheries, the chefs and restaurants in Ostend.
The food festival is held every year in the last weekend of June. This year 23 restaurants participate. The price you pay for a meal varies between four and six euro’s. This way you can taste a rich diversity of different courses whilst remaining accessible for everyone.
The three restaurants which we visited were Bistro La Galleria, Ostend Queen, and Ocean. Here are my 7 foodie hotspots in Ostend:
1. Bistro La Galleria
Bistro La Galleria is a cozy restaurant. They say it’s the smallest restaurant in Ostend. Specialties are bouillabaisse and shrimp croquettes (one of my favourite dishes). We start with the famous North sea shrimps, which were caught last night, cooked on board of the ship and served as fresh as possible. Followed by a tasty Ostend sole roll.
2. Ostend Queen
During L’Ostendaise restaurant Ostend Queen will serve a sea bass tartare. We had a preview (and a prebite).
You can make reservations for a special room when you are with a group of people.
All tables have a sea view so everybody can enjoy the sunset.
3. Ocean
We start with a tasty and festive aperitif at restaurant Ocean: champenoise with elderflower. Ostend-style fish soup is on the menu. We also taste the salmon, served with sauce Hollandaise, asparagus and mashed potatoes.
4 & 5. Drinks at ’t Botteltje and De Familie Jansen
We end our foodie tour at ‘t Botteltje which is a nice pub serving about 300 different kinds of beer.
De Familie Jansen is a wonderful coffee bar with specialty coffees and teas. Coco lemon espresso is their lovely specialty: lemon juice, espresso and stirred coconut milk.
6. Among the other restaurants which take part in A L’Ostendaise is Finess, a restaurant I visited last year.
7. Do you like cheese? Check out cheese shop Haspeslagh, selling about 250 varieties of cheese.
When you’re a Pure! food lover, especially one that loves fish and seafood, we recommend that you visit Ostend!
