Désiré de Lille — Restaurant in Antwerp

This place is located in the city center, has probably a well-known name and a lot of customers. I saw a lot of families with kids, couples, seniors, friends meeting there. Considering this, I don't understand why the place doesn't hire more people for its staff. Me and my boyfriend spent at the place 1 hour and a half just to get out coffees and waffles. Everything takes a lot of time - we were sitting at the table about 20 minutes before some waitress came to us. She asked what would we like to have. We said that we haven't seen the menus yet. So we waited for the menus. Then we waited to take order. Everything took about 15 minutes. Getting our order was surprisingly fast. But then we waited about half hour to pay. I was just hypnotizing that waitress to look my way so I give her a sign and we can pay. I was not successful and waitress came on her own terms, being very busy with other customers ordering and paying before me. Talking about food and drinks, I liked waffles with whipped cream and strawberries, even though I heard that they are not the most original variation of Belgian waffles. I liked that they could had been made without added powder sugar on the top. Considering a number of customers, nobody from staff even messed up my order. Thumb...

Find my previous 5star review below. Currently this place is struggling. It feels more understaffed than before, me and my table neighbours had to clean out tables by ourselves, there isn't enough personal to even remove the plates. Tables are a mess. Menu is reduced due to covid/staffing struggles which is understandable. Food is still good, however came without cutlery, after waffles started getting cold I again helped myself and found some forks.

I understand that these are trying times, and staff is hard to find, but then perhaps consider reducing the number of tables. This is 100% a management problem. Staff was nice and friendly despite being overworked.

So. I can still recommend when not busy, when busy go somewhere else.

--- previous review ---

I can't tell for the non sweet food I heard it can't keep up. However what I can tell is this:

I found the holy grail of pancakes. You haven't had an apple pancake before you had it at Desire de Lille in Antwerp. It's the end. Period.I just had the pancake to end all pancakes. I don't even know what to ever eat again, as everything seems reduced to profane...

I've been coming to this place for seven years, and, even though expensive, it was always good, the food was tasty and the service was nice.

But last week when we went there, it seems like the bar had really dropped. The menu had many less options than before and the prices had raised a lot.

We ordered a box of lacquemants to go and a waffle to eat. The waffle was not great, just plain ok, and the price was really high for the quality (7 €). The lacauemants were dry and not fresh. But the real surprise came when they came over to our table saying that the price of the lacquemants was 2'5 € higher than shown on the menu (12'5 instead of 10). It seemed as if they just wanted to charge us more, because if it was a real price increase, they would have just scratched off the price and updated it on the menu. This is literally illegal.

And last but not least, two out of 3 pieces of cutlery were visibly dirty, as if not clean from the previous service.

We probably won't come again, as there are many better...