Amfora, Ghent

On a brief visit to Ghent last weekend, we had lunch at this unassuming place, and I was very pleasantly surprised by how good the food was.

The restaurant is located on a pretty square a few minutes away from the central place of the town, in a nice shopping area. From outside, it looks like a café with simple snacks for food and when you enter, the downstairs guestroom is far from charming. However, there is an upstairs which is inviting and has a lovely view towards the square the restaurant is on and the interesting architecture around it.

The place is indeed more a cafe than a restaurant in that it is open only during day and offers mainly cafe-type dishes, which also has a very positive effect on the prices, and all dishes and drinks we had were excellent.

I had a quiche with a shrimp and cheese filling (a local specialty), which sounds odd but tasted marvellous, my partner had meatballs in a spicy vegetable sauce, which came with really good fries, our friends an omelette and a focaccia filled with goat cheese.
For dessert there were pancakes with chocolate sauce and a really good vanilla ice-cream. The pancakes were wonderfully light and fluffy - if I'd known before, I'd have had them just with a sugar sprinkling, as they didn't need a sauce to help them go down.
For drinks, there was an ample choice of Belgian beers and I had a tea that came in style in a little cast iron tea pot.

Definitely a recommendation if you need a bit of a refreshment between shopping and enjoying the beauties of Ghent.

http://www.zone09.be/wca_digi/resto_detail/63/52157/Amfora-.html