Umami — Restaurant in Antwerp

Fancy place but a little bit overrated in my opinion.

We ordered the menu, service was quick and very friendly. However the food was nothing super special, just a bit better than base brasserie level. You can get better Sushi at a sushi place and better Japanase/Korean at way cheaper asian restaurants in the city.

The setting is nice, pretty unique atmosphere. An interior designer was involved in designing the space for sure.

We did not really like our table location however (in a busy corridor with a lot of servant passage). Also the whole place was damp and smelled like an indoor gourmet without proper venting. They need to fix their kitchen hoods. The open kitchen was nice to see though.

Another minus for me is that they don't have any beers on tap, which is very strange in Belgium.

We ended up paying €220+ for 2 menu's, 2 cocktails and some bottled beers...

If we'd taken wine it would have been €~300 which is a bit ridiculous for this restaurant.

The price quality ratio needs to be a lot better.

All in all this place felt a little bit too much like a money making factory for mister Van den Borght (the millionaire who owns this chain) offering just a little bit better than medium quality in return. I would not revisit this restaurant in particular but might try some of his other places as the experience was quite unique here and the service very good.

I guess a lot of the money one pays here goes to the instagrammable interior and the many servants. The place has a very high "M'as-tu-vu" factor and some of the other guests were quite hilarious wearing their "I have a rich...

Service is really poor and very inexperienced. Lots of the staff were practically on their first day and didn't know anything, constantly the wrong food came to the table, it took forever to get menus, ... Almost everything went wrong. And at last they even cleared our entire table when going to the toilet/smoke.

This would be excused if the food was great, but nothing of the sort... and the prices are really unjustified. 4 chicken skewers, without any garnish is 18 euro. With rice and side of vegetable, this becomes minimum 38.5 euro for chicken satay?!? And the chicken was even overcooked and drowning in sweet sauce. Other dishes were all very similar: lack of any quality. E.g the ceviche were large chunks of chewy fish with even part of bones in it.

The only thing they have going for themselves is a great location (and hype).

Never going back! Except maybe for drinks...

Hiped up place but honestly not worth it

The place has so much potential but there are a lot of things lacking personnel - not even one person smiled and made people feel welcome; also very understaffed that you have to chase people to order things experience menu is strongly overpriced and you get covered in plates on a small table and your dinner is over in 1 hour - not much of an experience so to say tables are cramped up very closely and you have very little privacy - waiting staff keeps bumping into chairs

if you make reservation make sure to ask not to be seated at the "bar" because you will be watching kitchen team making the food in a rush and there will be a lot of dish noise

Overall, okay to try once...