Sans Cravate

Sans Cravate. The name is Flemish self-deprecation, 'no tie', the kind of restaurant where the patron would rather you didn't feel you had to dress up. Sits on Langestraat a twenty-minute walk from the centre. Henk and Veronique Van Oudenhove-Bogaert opened it in 2010; the first Michelin star arrived in 2011, and they have held it for thirteen consecutive years. One of the most consistent single-star records in Belgium.

The cooking is modern Belgian-French. A classical technique spine with careful seasonal ingredient pressure. The menu is short (four starters, four mains, three desserts, plus the tasting menu) and changes roughly every two months. Signatures include a scallop preparation with brown-butter and capers, a pigeon course served table-side, and a chocolate dessert that Henk has been refining for a decade.

The wine list is French-classical with a meaningful Belgian-beer pairing option. Veronique runs the floor and is an accomplished beer sommelier as well as a wine sommelier. The beer-pairing option is one of the more interesting things happening in European fine dining and is genuinely worth choosing over the wine route for a Belgian-themed evening.

The dining room seats thirty across a single ground-floor hall, plus a small private room that holds eight. The setting is understated. White walls, quality tableware, careful low lighting. And the atmosphere is the 'no tie' the restaurant's name implies. Reservations for weekend dinner are currently running one to two weeks; lunch on weekdays is frequently walk-in available.

Thirteen years of a one-Michelin-star rating held without interruption, a husband-and-wife team who run the room personally, a beer-pairing option that no other starred room in Belgium offers. Sans Cravate is the First Date room in Bruges. Book the corner two-top, order the six-course tasting with the beer pairing, and let the evening unfold across two and a half hours.