restaurant review #242  – Jilles Beer and Burgers is a Belgian chain with three restaurants: one in Bruges, Oostende and in Ghent. Since a couple of months, Jilles has a seperate vegan menu. Yeah!
The menu lists four vegan burgers: all the same hazelnutburger, with different extras.

We visited a couple of weeks ago, as we wanted to try the new vegan burger before going to a show in the neighbouring Kursaal. We sat on the terrace. And waited. And waited. And waited …
It took about 25 minutes before a waiter came to simply give us a menu. By that time we felt we wouldn’t be making it in time for the show at the Kursaal. We told them and left.
So no dinner before the show (always have energy bars as back up 😉

We tried again recently. It was much calmer now. Although staff was again not very attentative. Again it took a while for the waiter to hand us the menu (about 10 minutes) and take our order for drinks. One has to wait at the entrance of the terrace to be seated by staff, so why can’t they just give you a menu and already ask for drinks directly at the moment of being seated?
We immediately choose from the menu and explictely called the waiter ourselves to come back and take our order.
After having ordered, it didn’t take long for our food to be served.

We had the curry sally (with apple, curry veganaise, vegan cheeze, ..) and the nutty molly (with guacamole). Each 16,50€. With sweet potato on the side (I don’t recall the price). The burgers were nice, but very expensive.
It would certainly be nice to see more variety in the burgers (all the same hazelnut burger).

NOTE: The regular potato fries aren’t vegan. They are baked together with chicken (the waiter remarked this). The sweet potato fries were said to be vegan (confirmed by e-mail from Jilles previously).
The salad on the side of the burger comes in nice weck jars. We specifically asked whether they were vegan and the waiter confirmed. There used to be non-vegan versions and vegan versions of the salad, but since recently they make all salads on the side standardly vegan.
The vegan burgers are baked on a seperate grill.

Beware that this is a non-vegan restaurant, and the confrontation with non-vegan items around is inescapable (eg the stuffed head on the wall).

Toilet was clean. There are paper towels to dry ones hands. The restaurant is also accessible (small ramp) and there is a wheelchair accessible toilet.

All in all: Great that Jilles now has a seperate vegan menu (and there’s also a vegan kids menu!).  The communication about the vegan items (eg fries, salad) was also very clear. There’s a large terrace, with a nice view on the beach and Kursaal. And it is accessible. On both visits, staff was rather unattentive (very long wait) and it is on the expensive side (16,50€ for burger).

Jilles Beer and burgers Oostende, location
Albert I-promenade 60,
8400 Oostende
059 44 00 55

website: https://www.jilles.be/nl/locaties/oostende

Looking for restaurants?
See my lists of restaurants where vegans are welcome in the menu section of The Bruges vegan! List restaurants in Bruges and outside  Bruges.