Just another Saturday, this time going out with my parents in law Lucien and Nicole after being to a crazy old neighborhood reunion with them in the middle of Antwerp. Time to have some dinner in on of  their favorite restaurants, restaurant Kandinsky in Kapellen, near Antwerp. (http://www.kandinsky.be/)

This restaurant you could describe as a traditional Flemish / Belgian restaurant with things on the menu as cheese or shrimp croquette, beef carpaccio, typical Belgium stew with fries, vol-au-vent and a good steak.

After being seated in this always very busy restaurant, at the only round table between all square tables, which makes 00the routing terrible and the number of people in your back just awful, we quickly got our menu. Always a tough decision here because most of the food is very good, even the suggestion menu looked very good so yet another tough decision to be made…

While getting the first round of what you could call an amuse, we ordered our food; 3 steaks and a salad. 1 filet pure, 2 Argentinian Entrecote and a shrimp salad for my father in law, what is very surprising for a carnivore, but for him being maybe the only person going out more to a restaurant than me, I can imagine a salad every now and then is highly appreciated (and needed as well…)

As you can see on this terrible photo, the amuse is just as bad as the photo it self….a simple dry toast with some kind of avocado salad with shrimps and mayonnaise, no crunch, no taste no inspiration….. a big disappointment because I know they can do better. And the worst thing is, after we finished it, a 2nd waiter came around bringing a new portion of the same….not understanding we just finished the previous batch, so communications was zero…

Then my filet pure arrived (not cheap at € 28,- knowing a regular steak costs € 16,-), but what a nice and perfectly cooked piece of meat! wow, grilled on the outside and still bloody on the inside, accompanied by a fresh Bearnaise sauce and a fresh chicory salad. And of course the best fresh Belgian fries in the world…

With this we drank a nice Cabarnet Sauvignon from Bellefontaine, a very strong wine for a Pays D’oc with taste of cherry and even some hay. But I could be wrong after some Duvel beer earlier that day…

My father in law had a good salad (by the way the entrecote of my wife and mother in law was just as good…), the salad was very rich with a good and fresh dressing and a lot of seafood inside. But even that was to much for him today…

In the end we had a good dinner. They are far from cheap, but that’s the problem for most Belgian restaurants at the moment, I think asking to much for good honest food. For me the staff is terrible, very busy, no system or communication and with all the tables so close next to the other no room to maneuver your way around. Asking 4 times for the check for me is unacceptable and the eye contact and attention just is not there.

So they have some good food and a nice restaurant, I like to go here again, but some things need to change quickly.

Overall score: 6.5 out of 10