Eggs sizzle in the tiny kitchen where Charlotte
Koopman and Hadas Cna’ani are cooking, their
movements fast and deliberate as they stir,
pour and fry food for the eclectic crowd settling
at tables. With its concrete columns and
metallic pipes, the first floor of warehouse-
turned-arts-complex Het Bos is an industrial
setting for a resolutely home-spun occasion:
the Otark Sunday breakfast club. Today,
there’s warm Georgian flatbreads heaped with
hummus, artichoke and dukkah (an Egyptian
spice mix); aubergine jam with Romanian
sheep’s cheese; and fried eggs with tomatoes,
honey and oregano. There’s also ice cream: fig
leaf, salted butter caramel, roasted strawberry
with white miso. Ice cream might seem an
unusual choice for breakfast, but as morning
turns to afternoon and an increasingly
hungover crowd spills in, nobody needs
convincing. With food this good, it’s only right
that breakfast is a three-course meal.
l Breakfast dishes from US$2; otarkproductions.
blogspot.com
The breakfast
Above The coffee
shop, complete with
bean roaster, at Het
Bos, which also has
a gig venue, theatre
and exhibition spaces.
Below Sunny side up
eggs with tomato,
honey and oreganoAbove 16th-century
type blocks from
Museum Plantin-
Moretus’s collection,
which also includes
musical notes and the
Hebrew alphabet.
Below The medieval
garden at the heart of
the museum, which has
been open to the public
since 1877During the 16th and 17th centuries, Antwerp
was the largest city north of the Alps. A
commercial powerhouse, it grew rich on the
spoils of the Spanish Empire, and people came
from far and wide to make their fortune. One of
them was Christopher Plantin, a printing
pioneer whose home and headquarters lives
on as the one-of-a-kind Museum Plantin-
Moretus. A warren of beautifully preserved
rooms spread around a peaceful medieval
garden, it’s the only museum in the world that’s
listed as a World Heritage site by Unesco –
although it still feels like Plantin could walk in
at any moment. The smell of musty books and
wood polish hangs in the air of his creaking,
timber-beamed home, its walls lined with
tapestries and gilded leather
wallpaper. Treasures include early
maps, a Gutenberg Bible and
paintings by his friend Rubens- while in the printing quarters,
the collection is rarer still. Here,
there are stacks of inky letters
up to the ceiling, original font
sets and, in the workshop
where printers once toiled from
dawn until dusk, the oldest
printing presses in the world.
l Admission US$8.50;
museumplantinmoretus.be
The museum
ANTWERP AT A GLANCE