Le Cirque

Should You Book Le Cirque in Belsele?

If you're weighing Le Cirque against the better-known Belgian fine dining circuit, here is the short version: this is a Michelin Plate-recognised Creative French restaurant in Belsele that consistently earns recognition from Opinionated About Dining, La Liste, AAA at a €€€ price point that undercuts most of its peers. For a food enthusiast looking for serious French-influenced cooking outside the major Belgian cities, Le Cirque warrants a booking. If you want the full-tilt Flemish tasting menu experience and are prepared to spend at €€€€ level, Boury in Roeselare or De Jonkman in Sint-Kruis are the comparison points. But Le Cirque is not trying to be those restaurants, that distinction matters.

The Portrait

Le Cirque sits on Nieuwe Baan 88 in Belsele, a quiet municipality on the outskirts of Sint-Niklaas in the East Flanders province. Chef Alan Mardonovich leads the kitchen with a Creative French approach. The awards record is telling: a 2025 Michelin Plate, a La Liste score of 85.5 points, an AAA 5 Diamond recognition, consecutive Opinionated About Dining rankings in 2024 (#443) and 2025 (#436). That upward movement in the OAD rankings is a useful signal — it suggests the kitchen is building, not coasting.

The price tier at €€€ is a meaningful part of the decision here. Belgium's most decorated creative restaurants — Castor in Beveren, Cuchara in Lommel, Boury, operate at €€€€. Le Cirque delivers multiple credible award validations at a tier below. That gap is not a quality gap so much as a positioning choice, for a food enthusiast doing the maths on a Belgian eating trip, it is an argument in Le Cirque's favour.

On the service question: with an AAA 5 Diamond award in play, the expectation is that service is formal, attentive, well-drilled. AAA 5 Diamond is a hospitality credential as much as a culinary one, it implies front-of-house meets a specific standard of care. Whether the service style actually earns the price point is harder to verify from available data, but the combination of a Michelin Plate (which assesses the kitchen) and a 5 Diamond (which incorporates the full dining experience) suggests the two sides of the room are aligned. For a special occasion or an anniversary dinner where service quality matters as much as food, Le Cirque has the credentials to support that expectation.

The hours require attention. Le Cirque is only open for dinner, 5 to 10 pm, is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That leaves Thursday through Monday evenings as your windows. There is no lunch service currently listed, which affects how you plan a wider Belgian itinerary. If you are travelling specifically from Antwerp or Ghent, factor in the drive to Sint-Niklaas. Zilte in Antwerp or Hof van Cleve in Kruishoutem are points of comparison for those routing through different parts of Flanders.

For broader context on what the Creative French format delivers at this level: kitchens working in this space tend to use classical French technique as the structural foundation while allowing significant latitude in ingredient sourcing and composition. The distinction from pure Modern Flemish (Boury, De Jonkman) is partly philosophical and partly product-driven. If you have eaten at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris or AM par Alexandre Mazzia in Marseille and want to understand what Belgian creative cooking looks like when it leans French rather than Flemish, Le Cirque is a useful reference point at a fraction of the Paris price.

The Belgian creative dining circuit is well-covered on Pearl. For more options in the region, see our full Belsele restaurants guide, or explore Bartholomeus in Heist, Willem Hiele in Oudenburg, and L'air du temps in Liernu for the wider Flemish and Walloon context. Le Cirque is not a hard table to secure by Belgian fine dining standards, but the five-night-per-week dinner-only schedule means the calendar fills faster than the difficulty rating might suggest. Booking one to two weeks in advance is a reasonable baseline for a weekday Thursday or Friday. Saturday evenings will need more lead time. There is no confirmed online booking method in the available data, so contacting the restaurant directly is the safest approach.

Practical Details

How It Compares

See the full comparison section below.

More in Belgium

• Bozar Restaurant in Brussels
• d'Eugénie à Emilie in Baudour
• L'air du temps in Liernu