Tag: Flanders

Story of the week: Exploring Antwerp’s docklands regeneration

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* I’ll be heading back to Antwerp this autumn. The new Red Star Museum opens September 24 and I’ll be back for a preview having watched the regeneration of the docklands Little Island region since I first wrote the story below.

What’s changed since I wrote this? Post your comments below.

Antwerp is the Flanders city with that rare quality in Belgium: quirkiness.

Yes, it’s got diamonds, fashion and enough old-Europe money to stuff a bank vault several times over, but it’s the variety of village-style districts, all easily explored on foot and revelling in their own idiosyncratic character, that really sets it apart from living-museum Bruges and pen-pushing Brussels.

September brings Open Monument Day to Flanders and Antwerp will unlock the hidden-gem and tucked-away places that visitors rarely get to explore, such as the Antwerp Ruien, the city’s network of subterranean waterways.

Make sure to stop off around the Latin Quarter en route to buy traditional Antwerpse Handjes biscuits from Philip’s Biscuits and pastries from the Goossens bakery. These perennial-favourite delicacies will be fuelling the locals as they explore.

Water features heavily on Antwerp’s regeneration agenda with a whole new district of the city, the Eilandje (Small Island) docklands area north of the Old Town, currently opening up to explore.

Antwerp remains the world’s fourth largest port but the buzz is now about café culture not containers.

To be fair, the urban renaissance is still a bit work in progress, but the slow-progress evolution is even tempting the traditionally reserved Antwerp residents to leave their comfort zone of the fashionable south of the city to explore the shabby-chic north.

September in the Old Town also means the tour-party hordes are subsiding and the cobbled sidestreets less crowded to hunt out the interesting little galleries, cafes and boutiques.

But don’t fall for the last menus touristiques of the season around Groenplaats. A tram heading south will deposit you near Leopold de Waelplaats, nearby which you can eat amongst the locals at the pavement tables of Grill or Bar Italia and the watch the ritual weekend parade of designer garb and sports cars over a waffle-free brunch.

When you’re full, simply pop across the road to the landmark Royal Museum of Fine Arts (kmska.be). The permanent collection with works by Rubens and Magritte before is currently closed with major renovation ongoing until 2014.

Don’t miss

… the legacy of the Antwerp Six fashion collective on the city’s fashion sense. Fashion stalwart Dries van Noten maintains his flagship store, Het Modepaleis (www.driesvannoten.be) at Nationalestraat 16. But the latest crop of fashion graduates can be found exhibiting their collections at the Fashion Museum (momu.be).

… the Diamond Museum (diamantmuseum.be), which tells the story of the city’s love affair with big rockssome 85% of the world’s rough diamonds are traded in Antwerp’s diamond quarter.

… a close brush with Adam and Eve in Paradise. This iconic work is one of several by the Flemish master kept at The Rubens’s House (rubenshuis.be) with its baroque aesthetics and informative audio tour. But, for art without the crowds, the revamped Photo Museum (fotomuseum.be) offers a more contemporary view.

… people watching from a pavement café with a glass of local brew, De Koninck, or as thoughts turn to autumn, from a comfy armchair at Günter Watté’s chocolate-themed café (watt.be), sipping a latte and negotiating one of his dainty chocolate-pastry creations with a cake fork and a taste for indulgence.

… dipping your bitterballen (meatballs) into spicy sauce at the Art Deco-style Frituur No 1. Flanders has the finest fries on earth – prepared from Belgian Bintje potatoes, cut to a length of 11mm and fried twice for extra crispiness, since you ask – and this frituur is one of the best places to try them.

What’s new?

Het Eilandje

The first fruits of regeneration in the Small Island district are now ripe. New places to eat and drink, such as Felixpakhuis and Lux, are building a new following, the Royal Ballet of Flanders (koninklijkballetvanvlaanderen.be) has moved to a new performance space and a major, modernist new museum, Museum aan de Stroom (MAS; mas.be), is now open, telling the story of Antwerp as a world port city. By 2014 the tram system catches up with the progress to improve access.

Graanmarkt 13

Concept stores are de rigueur in Antwerp and this über-chic new opening, located at the heart of the Latin Quarter, takes the trend to its zenith. It combines a minimalist high-fashion clothes and interiors store upstairs with a suitably chic, candlelit downstairs eatery. But don’t blow the budget on a new outfit as the dégustation menu costs 80€ / £67 for eight nouvelle cuisine courses without wine; graanmarkt13.be

Hotel Les Nuits

The en-vogue home interior shop Flamant is branching out. First came the restaurant Flamant Dining (flamantdining.com) with its cool lounge and sunny roof terrace. Now the adjacent Hotel Les Nuits lives up to its nocturnal moniker with 24 Asian-styled rooms, each featuring black-lacquer cabinets and a low-lit, boudoir-chic feel. If you like the room décor, you can buy every single piece in the shop next door; hotellesnuits.be.

Paleis op de Meir

The city’s major new cultural space is the 18th-century, rococo building once chosen by Napoleon as his imperial place but never inhabited. The stately building has been saved from years of neglect and the restored rooms, all elaborate and ornate, yearn to recount their own individual story. Downstairs the Café Imperial (cafe-imperial.be) serves afternoon teas fit for an emperor  with a glass of bubbly; paleisopdemeir.be.

The Chocolate Line

Located across the courtyard from the entrance to the Paleis op de Meir, chocolatier to the stars Dominique Persoone has opened the latest Chocolate Line shop. Next to the lavish displays of chi-chi chocs, the open kitchen lets visitors pick up some of the secrets of a chocolate-crafting master at work. If you’re adventurous, enquire about a pure cocoa hit from the chocolate shooter. Well, it was good enough for Keith Richards; thechocolateline.be.

Insider’s secret

Tom Le Clef, manager, Felixpakhuis lounge and restaurant [pictured above]

“The next-door warehouse to our restaurant is Dries van Noten’s offices, but he also holds stock sales there each spring and summer. Time your visit well and you can catch up to 80 per cent off original designs. But get there early – the queues start at 6am.”

Further information

Tourism Flanders-Brussels (visitflanders.co.uk); Antwerp Tourism (visit.antwerpen.be).

This story was first published in the Independent on Sunday in 2010.

Liked this? Try also, Tracking Modern Art in Ghent.

Your view? Post your comments below.

Benelux: More to food than fries and waffles

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Think the Benelux countries. Think food. What comes to mind? Chips and waffles? A smoke and a pancake?

This summer I’ll be heading across the Benelux region to disprove these very myths.

The Benelux Economic Union formally came into being in 1944 but, historically, there’s a common heritage of local produce and traditional recipes to bond the three Benelux countries together.

And, as part of a new joint initiative between the Holland, Flanders and Luxembourg tourist boards, they’re ready to tell the world there’s more to lowland Europe than hackneyed stereotypes.

Traditional Benelux recipes, such as salt water fish waterzooi (a broth of fish and eggs) and Hustepot (braised pig trotters), have been passed down the generations from the Middle Ages. They draw on the farming tradition and seasonal produce of the region.

We still find them today but, in a region increasingly known for Michelin-starred restaurants, organic markets and celebrity chefs, they come with a contemporary twist – a common heritage blended with external influences.

That’s the angle I’m planning to explore.

It’s not the first time I’ve covered this region from a food angle. I’ve just writen a piece for The Independent about the cheese trail in Holland (watch this space for more details) and I wrote a story for the Financial Times a few years ago about the frituur culture (pictured above) of Flanders.

Here’s an extract – there’s no working link online:

The Flanders region of northern Belgium is home to the very finest frituurs, a simple, informal eatery and a Belgian institution, where master friars prepare superior fries and serve them in a paper cone. The best fries are prepared from Belgian Bintje potatoes, cut to a length of 11mm and fried twice for extra crispiness.

Antwerp alone boasts over 200 frituurs and they are seen as a place where people from walks of life can come together amongst Formica tables and plastic sauce dispensers to chew the fat.

“As a country with no obvious symbols of nationalism, the humble and improvised frituur is our only symbol. It reflects the ad-hoc nature of the Belgian personality, our indifference to aesthetics,” says Paul Ilegems, an art historian, who has devoted 25 years of his life to collecting images of the fried potato throughout history.

“Fries are originally Belgian with the term ‘French fries’ a corruption of the word,” he explains, handing me copies of his books to browse, amongst them Frietgeheimen (Secrets of the Fries) and Het Volkomen Frietboek (The Complete Fries Book). “The American slang term ‘to French’, meaning to cut into thin strips, was only brought to Europe by American troops after World War I,” he adds.

Keep reading for more details of commissions and trip plans. Meanwhile, please post your favourites place, top foodie tips and suggestions for places to visit or dishes to sample below.

I’d love to crowdsource some suggestions.

Story of the day: Shine a light on Flanders

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We all need brightening up this time of year. Flanders, a destination I’ve covered extensively of late, had a good idea last January.

I went to Ghent for the Independent on Sunday to preview the Light Festival Ghent, which brought illuminated public-art installations to the wintery streets of the Old Town.

Here’s an extract:

The second city in Flanders (after Antwerp), Ghent has forged a reputation for its innovative lighting work in recent years, winning design awards for a policy of up-lighting historic buildings with warm-white light.

The free-to-visit winter festival maps out 30 light installations along a 3.5km (2.2 miles) walking trail around the city centre, illuminating historic and often-missed buildings.

Examples of the works include a light-and-sound installation in Ghent University’s Aula building by the Dutch artist Mr Beam, and Guerrilla Lighting – a flash-mob light installation in four locations by UK artists Light Collective.

Read the full story, See the Light in Festive Flanders.

Do you have a favourite city light festival? Or suggestions to brighten up those January nights?

Post your comments below.

Story of the Day: Tracking modern art in Ghent

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I’ve been a regular in Flanders over the last couple of years. The combination of an easy Eurostar hop and lots of city-break angles – from Belgian fries to urban regeneration – have made for a rich seam of stories for me to mine.

This piece, taken from the Weekend Financial Times, has a modern-art angle on Ghent.

Sometimes the story looks better in the planning and turns out to be something of a letdown in situ. This was one of those.

Here’s an extract:

“My favourite work is an open-air library overseen by the Italian artist Massimo Bartolini [pictured above]. Set amid vineyards, against the medieval backdrop of St Peter’s Abbey, the 12 rows of bookshelves are filled with 8,000 donated books. The order is random and visitors are encouraged to borrow books and return new ones.

“Ssh,” grins Bartolini, adopting the persona of head librarian as I greet him between the tightly packed shelves. “I first saw an outdoor library in Hay-on-Wye. This place feels like an extension of the cloisters: part interior, part exterior. I like that.”

Read the full story, A Postcard from Ghent.

Did I miss the point here? Or was Track more arse than art?

Post your comments below.