Find places to eat, things to do and local favourites for your stay by the sea.
Selected by Ostend City Guide
Restaurant
Centre
A Thai restaurant on the Vlaanderenstraat in central Ostend: curries, Pad Thai and stir-fries to eat in, take away or have delivered.
Cocktail bar
Lively cocktail and tapas bar by the Kursaal, with tropical and tiki cocktails, late-night sharing plates, pasta and resident DJs.
Oosteroever
Sharing restaurant and cocktail bar by the fishing boats on the Oosteroever: world-inspired small plates, its own house wine and creative cocktails.
Art
The painter James Ensor’s home and studio, kept as he left it, with an interactive visitor centre on his masks, carnival and Ostend.
Attraction
Raversijde
Open-air museum in the dunes with more than 60 bunkers, gun positions and tunnels from both world wars, on Prince Charles’ former estate.
Ostend’s 57.5-metre lighthouse from 1949 with its blue wave pattern; not open to visitors, but a short free ferry ride from the centre.
Hotel
Mariakerke
Large holiday hotel on the Mariakerke promenade with rooms and apartments, buffet restaurants, an indoor pool, a kids’ play village and the tram outside.
Holiday home
Five-bedroom group house for up to 12 in the Raversijde dunes, next to the Atlantikwall museum, with a fireplace, garden and outdoor shower.
Apartment
Six new-build, two-bedroom serviced apartments for four in Ooststraat, in the shopping streets of central Ostend, each with a balcony.
28Mar
Exhibition
Seafront (Zeedijk)
28 Mar – 3 Jan 2027
10:00–17:30
About 100 works trace 150 years of small sculpture in Belgium, from Art Deco statuettes to Wim Delvoye, at Mu.ZEE on the seafront until 3 January 2027.
16May
16 May – 9 Nov 2026
10:00–18:00
A small exhibition at Ostend’s City Museum on Paster Pype, the priest remembered as the father of the fishermen, with unseen photographs. Until 9 November.
