Nr.12 by Helsen

The Verdict

If you have eaten at Nr.12 by Helsen before, the question on a second visit is whether the kitchen has moved forward or settled into its winning formula. Based on two consecutive Michelin Bib Gourmand awards — 2024 and 2025 — the answer appears to be the former. Chef Roberto Filgueira is running a modern cuisine kitchen in Herentals that punches well above its price tier, and the €€ positioning makes it one of the more compelling arguments for leaving Antwerp or Brussels for a meal in the Kempen region. Book it, particularly if you are planning a celebration dinner and want serious cooking without a four-figure bill.

Portrait

Nr.12 by Helsen sits on the Grote Markt in Herentals, a central-Belgium market square address that places it within easy reach of Antwerp, roughly 30 kilometres to the southwest. The location is a practical asset: this is not a destination restaurant that requires a full weekend, but it rewards one. For a special-occasion dinner, the setting on a historic town square gives the evening a frame that a city side-street cannot quite replicate.

The Bib Gourmand recognition from Michelin is the clearest trust signal available here. The award specifically identifies restaurants where inspectors believe the quality-to-price ratio is stronger than the surrounding category, it is not a consolation prize below a star, but an affirmative statement about value. Two consecutive years of that recognition, in 2024 and 2025, tells you this is not a one-season performance. It also signals that the cooking is consistent enough to re-earn inspector confidence, which matters if you are travelling to Herentals rather than walking distance from home.

Chef Roberto Filgueira leads the kitchen. Under a modern cuisine brief, the cooking at Nr.12 tends toward structured progression, this is the kind of restaurant where the sequence of dishes is considered, where contrast between courses is deliberate, and where the meal has a clear arc rather than a list of plates. That tasting-menu architecture, even when applied to a shorter or more accessible format than a full-evening omakase, is what separates this from a good neighbourhood bistro. The progression matters. The pacing matters. For a date dinner or a birthday celebration, that structure gives the evening a natural rhythm that makes the occasion feel earned rather than assembled.

That is a more meaningful signal than a 4.7 built on tourist throughput.

On pricing: the €€ bracket in Belgium, particularly for a Bib Gourmand recipient, puts Nr.12 well below the €€€€ tier occupied by most of its serious-cooking peers in the region. If you are comparing value against restaurants like Boury in Roeselare or Zilte in Antwerp, Nr.12 is offering Michelin-recognised quality at a fraction of the outlay. That gap is the single strongest argument for booking, especially for groups celebrating something and watching the total bill.

Booking difficulty is rated Easy, which at a Bib Gourmand venue is worth reading carefully. Easy does not mean last-minute, a recognised restaurant in a smaller Belgian city can fill its dining room faster than the booking difficulty rating implies, particularly on Friday and Saturday evenings. For a special occasion, book two to three weeks in advance to secure your preferred date and time. If you are planning around a birthday or anniversary and need a specific evening, push that window to four weeks. Walking in without a reservation is less reliable than the booking difficulty rating suggests for weekend service.

For diners travelling specifically for the meal, Herentals is well-connected by Belgian rail, which removes the driving calculation from a dinner with wine. The broader region offers enough to build a short trip around, see our full Herentals restaurants guide, hotels guide, and bars guide for what surrounds the meal.

For context on where Nr.12 sits within the wider Belgian fine-dining picture, it occupies a different register than the multi-star operations at Hof van Cleve in Kruishoutem or L'air du Temps in Liernu, but that is not the competition it is priced against. The relevant comparison is a well-run modern bistro at €€€ pricing, and on those terms, Nr.12 wins consistently. The Bib Gourmand is Michelin's way of making exactly that argument, and two consecutive years of it means the argument holds.

If modern cuisine tasting formats in Belgium interest you, the landscape extends outward from Herentals in useful directions. Castor in Beveren, De Jonkman in Sint-Kruis, and Cuchara in Lommel all sit at €€€€ and offer a different proposition: higher spend, more elaborate service architecture, and in some cases star-level ambition. Nr.12 is not trying to be those restaurants. It is trying to deliver a well-structured modern meal at a price that makes the decision easy, and on that basis it succeeds.

Also worth cross-referencing if you are building a Belgian eating trip: Bozar Restaurant in Brussels, Bartholomeus in Heist, Willem Hiele in Oudenburg, and d'Eugénie à Emilie in Baudour cover a range of formats and price points that complement what Nr.12 does. For international reference on tasting-menu architecture at the format's outer edge, Frantzén in Stockholm and FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai show where the format goes at full ambition and spend. You can also explore Herentals wineries and Herentals experiences to plan the full visit.

Ratings at a Glance

• Michelin: Bib Gourmand 2024, 2025
• Google:
• Price tier: €€
• Booking difficulty: Easy

Booking

Book two to three weeks ahead for a standard dinner. Four weeks minimum for a specific weekend date tied to a celebration. No booking phone or website is listed in our current data, check the venue directly via Google or the Grote Markt address. Booking difficulty is Easy, but that applies outside peak weekend slots.