Hotel Pilar

Excellently located opposite The Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA), the sunny terrace of Hotel Pilar looks welcoming. However, although pleasant and courteous the service was slow, and the food mediocre. My friend's meatloaf was acceptable, but my Shrimp Croquettes were not: composed of a slimy brown sauce, deep-fried, the two small croquettes (20€) had very little to do with shrimps, and a great deal to do with processed food. Disappointing.

The small room we booked turned out to be not only huge but also an interior designers dream, the hidden staircase is a gallery full of contemporary art and the breakfast was a delight - even for breakfast-avoiders like me. The location could not be better if you like restaurants and being far enough away from the beaten tourist tracks.

My stay was a disaster The door to my room did not close, and the heating in the room didn’t work. I arrived to find my room completely open and totally freezing. In the morning, the room was so cold inside that there was water on the windows. Building work on my floor started before 7am. The door to the fire escape was propped open, which only made me even colder. There were workmen banging, scraping, and slamming doors from 7am. All made worse by the fact that my own room door wouldn’t close and so kept banging every time they went past. It turned out I’d even been put in the wrong room I told the front desk about this in the morning, but then sat at breakfast for an hour, with no apology or even acknowledgement from management. I watched the manager across the room stand for half an hour laugh and joke with some customers, but he didn’t even make eye contact me. This is the first time I have left a review for any hotel, but I feel I have to because it was so bad. Stay anywhere else in Antwerp but here. The street would be quieter, warmer, and cheaper. Delicious breakfast though

We were disappointed. We found the staff friendly and willing to help but were very unhappy with certain aspects of both the layout of the rooms and the standard of maintenance. In this connection, we were first taken to a room with one, rather dilapidated, cold water tap in the washhand basin (no hot water), a badly fitted toilet seat and a lack of space for clothes. To be fair, following our complaints, we were given a much better room. Even here though, the toilet seat was unaffixed on one side, so slid around, the main ceiling light was not working, the slot for inserting the room key card, and thus activating the lights, was broken so that on one occasion the card slipped out and extinguished all the lights, and the door into the room, like other doors in the hotel, was difficult to close. As to layout, a lot of space was taken up by a frankly superfluous bath, there was far too little space around the washhand basin for essential toiletries, the sink’s outflow system was either inefficient or blocked and the design was such that water from the tap tended to spurt onto the person concerned, and there was a general lack of storage space, typified by totally inadequate bedside tables. There are a number of other criticisms I could level but I hope the point is made. This is largely a management rather than a staff problem. A potentially very nice (and otherwise comfortable) hotel is spoilt by a number of defects, some of which require changes to the rooms’ layout but others simply call for regular maintenance checks to prevent defects before they occur.

Amazing food! Kind staff. We had lunch there with our team and everyone loved it. Very lively, great food and atmosphere. Definitely coming back!!!!! We sat inside,but can't wait for summer. Seems an amazing terrace with lots of plants. So will be back.