Leuven Cafe & Restaurant Reviews

Comparitive reviews of cafes, bars and restaurants in Leuven, Belgium.

see also: European Cafe Watch, chefmoz Leuven, Official Leuven web site

Leuven has a very high food-factor, with an outrageously high concentration of places to eat in a tiny city whose population is about 50000. You can eat well just about everywhere, which is a Belgian thing, and for some reason that I haven't worked out, almost every cafe has spaghetti on the menu in the same way that a British pub always has crisps. The strangest thing, though, is that the local bookshops don't seem to have any Leuven restaurant guides at all, in Flemish, French or English; still, there's always the web (Google search for Leuven restaurant reviews).

Contents: at The Bebop | Cafe den Artiest | La Cantina del Coronel | Commedia | Dewerf | D'Entreprise | Het Dagelijks Brood | Gambrinus | Imanus Sandwich Club | Komeet | Metropole | Notre Dame | Orient | Panem Unium | Il Pastaio

at The Bebop, Tiensestraat

Good for: drinks and food with jazz

at The Bebop is a pretty cool and accessible jazz café with a really good atmosphere and plenty of tables.

Cafe den Artiest, Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 21

Good for: getting away from the shops on Bondgenotenlaan

Not bad if you're shoppong on Bodgenotenlaan and need coffee. The rock-pop music selection is good for thirtysomethings, the decor isn't bad, and rest is fairly uninspiring. Still, it's an improvement on the formulaic blandness of Cafe Leffe just around the corner.

La Cantina del Coronel, Parijsstraat

Good for: Mexican food and cocktails

This place has excellent cocktails for only €4.50, including a delicious house cocktail made with pisco, lime, egg white and topped with cinnamon. The piña colada, complete with fresh pineapple slice, was also rather well-received, but the churning vat of margherita behind the bar didn't look very appetising. Oh, and you can also get a wide selection of Soth American meals here whose quality and size makes up for the price on the menu. It's only a shame that the service, or should I say our waiter, was rather miserable.

Commedia, Oude Markt 55, tel. 016 584443

Good for: chilling out, drinks and tapas

Tucked away in the corner of the hectic Oude Markt, here's a pleasant modern cafe bar of a kind rarely found in Benelux, let alone in small medieval university towns. This is what we like - a bar that takes its cocktails seriously, with good results and reasonable prices. The decor is from the school of dark wood, white synthetics, chrome, purple stripes and rounded rectangles; the music is inevitably lounge and electronic.

Dewerf, Hoogeschooplein 5, tel. 237314

Good for: lunch, healthy snacks and drinks

This place has a textbook-perfect terrace: an attractive small leafy square with trees and old buildings, almost no traffic, tables and umbrellas that give a good mix of sun and shade, decent wooden furniture (plastic chairs and tables should be illegal in public!) and good service.

The food is interesting - simple healthy stuff. The home-made herb bread sandwiches come in a lunch box, which is cute but soon extremely annoying. The sandwich is too unstable too pick up and eat and its runny dressing lines the tub and gets all over you when you try. Now, I've lived in Holland for long enough not to be completely freaked out by the idea of eating a sandwich with knife and fork, but in this case the sides of the tub get in the way. I knew I should have ordered one of those huge salads instead.

D'Entreprise, Naamsestraat 18, tel. 205898

Good for: drinks - cocktails

One of the few bars in the lively centre that has the kind of comfy chairs that are good for a relaxed evening's drinking, or an afternoon's reading.

It's a shame that the music isn't more mellow during the afternoon, though, and you might be better doing your reading on a back-lit PDA than trying to read a novel in the dark. In the end, then, you're better off doing your reading in Orient or Commedia and coming here for drinks in the evening.

Het Dagelijks Brood, Parijsstraat 35

Good for: breakfast and brunch

This is by far the best place in town for breakfast or brunch, with delicious bread and coffee and plenty of good toppings and pastries to go with them. It is a pseudo-rustic chain that I've also seen a copy of in Luxembourg and Bordeaux under the name La Table du Pain. Surprisingly, the guy I spoke to in Het Dagelijks Brood told me that there is no connection between the two chains.

Gambrinus, Grote Markt

Good for: drinks and snacks

Although this cafe is something of a museum-piece, with greying customers to match the old decor, it's actually rather good. The proper old-school service, comfortable bench seats and the general peacefulness are ideal for a long read or a quiet chat.

Imanus Sandwich Club, Naamsestraat 17, tel. 291082

Good for: sandwiches

The excellent baguettes and Italian sandwiches - fresh ciabatta and focaccia - give this place a regular lunch time queue between twelve and one, when it fills up with students getting take away. You can sit down at the back, which is convenient, but not somewhere to hang around.

Komeet, Oude Markt 54, tel. 296300

Good for: chilling out, drinks, tapas

Despite their supposed rarity (assuming that I wasn't making it up earlier on), here's another hip modern cafe right next to Commedia. The atmosphere is different though; more Ikea-with-jazz than Commedia's Habitat-with-lounge.

Metropole, Oude Markt

Good for: drinks, lunch, dinner, work-avoidance - everything!

This cafe's stylish old fashioned minimalism creates a sense of calm that makes this a great place to relax in the afternoon with a book or newspaper. The decor combines light open spaces with cream-coloured walls, worn wood, brass and light tiles, and a delightful lack of clutter. Like all such cafes, and especially busy ones with good service, there's plenty to watch if you sit at the end of the bar what with the staff rushing in and out. They seem to be a pretty cool bunch at Metropole too.

The food is good: simple Italian dishes with oil and fresh herbs in all the right places - our spaghetti, bruschetta and slab of feta was devoured with relish. You may be able to get spaghetti - veggie or bolognese - just about everywhere, but Metropole's is better than the others we've tried. If I actually lived in Leuven then I'd be here at least once a week.

Perhaps the menu's biggest star is the coffee verkeerd, served in a big mug with the frothy steamed milk in a jug on the side - a DIY latte for those of us who prefer our coffee less 'wrong' than it is usually served. All in all, there are probably only two reasons to ever go to another cafe: Metropole doesn't have a range of cocktails or the comfy furniture some other places have.

Notre Dame, Grote Markt

Good for: drinks, dinner

Orient, Oude Markt

Good for: drinks

Above average cafe and cocktail bar, whose hint of colonial style goes well with the afternoon lounge music. It also goes down well with Leuven's smart set. The cooler interior is a pleasant venue for a series of white beers (Brugse Wit) on a hot afternoon, and if it's still hot the next morning then this is also one of the nicer terraces for coffee on the shady side of the square.

If you're not so lucky and it's cold and horrible outside, then you'll be glad to discover that the coffee's above average here. Like Metropole, Orient does a good job of being good whatever the weather. Most of the cafes on Oude Markt, on the other hand, have good terraces but are horrendous inside. The only disappointment here was our cocktails, which despite the above-average price were not as good as they could have been.

Panem Unium, Tiensestraat

Above average sandwich place with a more traditional menu than Imanus.

Good for: sandwiches

Il Pastaio, Parijsstraat 33, tel. 230902

Good for: lunch, dinner

Excellent pasta dishes made with their own fresh pasta, and some delicious specialities. Last time, we preceded our pasta with a gorgeous wild mushroom and truffle-oil crostini. A welcome addition to the civilised atmosphere is the rather nice house red, for which you are charged by the centimetre so there's no need to stick to one or two glasses. The only annoyance was that the main course's plates weren't heated-up so the pasta didn't stay very hot for long.