A long-standing Antwerp pub that now has a viable claim to offering Europe's best beef burger. Actually, they never made that claim. I did.
De Pelgrim is a long-standing pub in Antwerp and one that has more recently upped it's worth to that of a "gastropub". It's easy to see why. Sitting at the top end of Antwerp's Boomgaardsrtaat, it's effectively at the epicentre of what has become Antwerp's "foodie district". Cynicism about food tourism aside, its credentials are impeccable: it's directly across the road from a hipster foodie complex that includes the Antwerp outlet of the vaunted butcher that supplies the meat for its amazing burgers.
The butcher in this case is the Antwerp outlet of the De Laet-Van Haver butcher that first established its supremacy for supplying meat second to none in Hove before repeating its formula of a high-end butcher and meat-specialist bistro in Antwerp.
And they are the ones who supply De Pelgrim for their in-house burgers. Not just any burgers, mind. The delicious aged beef used for their is from small-herd "Belgian blue" cattle and lovingly aged before it's turned into burgerliciousness, or not, if you order the steaks on their modern European menu with a definitely Flemish falir.
But, while meat is a core discussion here, it's not only that. It is their overall burger. For example, the made-in-house rolls that they use can only be described as somewhere between a brioche and a crusty focaccia and have a lot to do with why their house burger is among the most memorable anywhere on the continent.
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