Restaurant in Turnhout, Belgium
Good cooking, fair prices, book ahead.
Amu holds both a Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024) and a Michelin Plate (2025) at the €€ price point, making it the strongest value case for modern cuisine in Turnhout. With a 4.6 Google rating across 238 reviews, it consistently overdelivers for its bracket. Book a week ahead for weekends; mid-week offers more flexibility in a compact, neighbourhood-scale room.
If you have already eaten at Amu once, you already know the answer: come back. The combination of a Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024) and a Michelin Plate (2025) at the €€ price point is the kind of progression that signals a kitchen with direction, not a room coasting on early goodwill. For explorers looking for modern cuisine in the Campine region without paying Hert-level prices, Amu is the clearest answer in Turnhout right now.
Amu is on Patersstraat, a quiet street in Turnhout's centre, and the physical setting matters to how the evening reads. The address and scale place this firmly in the category of compact, neighbourhood-rooted dining rooms rather than grand destination venues. That means close tables, a room that feels full when it is full, and an atmosphere shaped more by the people in it than by dramatic interior design. This is a place where the spatial intimacy works in your favour on a weeknight, when the room breathes, but can tip into noise on a busy Friday or Saturday. If you want a quieter experience, mid-week is the call. The spatial register is closer to CucinaMarangon than to the more composed dining rooms you find at Zilte in Antwerp or Boury in Roeselare.
The Michelin recognition tells you something concrete: the Bib Gourmand specifically rewards good cooking at moderate prices, and its conversion to a Plate in 2025 suggests the kitchen has moved from reliable to ambitious. At the €€ price range, you are in a bracket where overdelivery is possible, and Amu appears to be doing exactly that. For a food-focused traveller who has already worked through the higher end of the Belgian fine dining circuit, from Hof van Cleve to Willem Hiele to Bartholomeus, Amu offers something different: a chance to see what modern cuisine looks like when the budget constraint is part of the discipline, not the limitation.
Turnhout is not a city with a dense late-night dining scene, which means Amu's role after standard dinner hours depends significantly on how the kitchen structures its service. The practical reality for the explorer arriving from Antwerp or passing through on a longer Belgian itinerary is this: book dinner here rather than treating it as a spontaneous late option. The €€ pricing and the Michelin profile both suggest a set or menu-format experience rather than a casual drop-in, and the room's compact scale reinforces that. If you are building an evening in Turnhout, Amu is the anchor, not the afterthought. Check our Turnhout bars guide for where to continue the evening once the kitchen closes. For broader planning in the city, our full Turnhout restaurants guide covers the competitive set in full.
Belgium's modern cuisine circuit has real depth: Bozar Restaurant in Brussels, Castor in Beveren, and internationally the ambition of rooms like Frantzén in Stockholm and FZN by Björn Frantzén in Dubai define what the category can reach. Amu is not competing at that altitude, and it is not trying to. What it offers is Michelin-validated modern cooking at prices that make a second visit an easy decision, in a city where the alternatives at this quality level are limited. That is a genuinely useful position to hold. Explorers who approach it with that framing, rather than expecting a destination-level tasting room, will leave satisfied.
Reservations: Book in advance; this is a small room with Michelin recognition and a strong local following, though booking difficulty is rated as Easy relative to comparable Belgian venues. Budget: €€ price range, making it one of the stronger value propositions for Michelin-tracked modern cuisine in the Campine region. Dress: No formal dress code is confirmed in available data; smart casual is a safe and appropriate choice for a room at this level. Getting there: Address is Patersstraat 79, 2300 Turnhout. Also see: our Turnhout hotels guide, our Turnhout wineries guide, and our Turnhout experiences guide for a full picture of the city.
| Venue | Cuisine | Price | Awards | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amu | Modern Cuisine | €€ | Michelin Plate (2025); Michelin Bib Gourmand (2024) | Easy | — |
| Hert | Modern Flemish, Modern French | €€€€ | Michelin 1 Star | Unknown | — |
| Bink | Modern French | €€€ | Unknown | — | |
| CucinaMarangon | Italian | €€ | Unknown | — | |
| Savoury | Modern Cuisine | €€€ | Unknown | — |
How Amu stacks up against the competition.
There is no published dress code, but a Michelin Plate venue in a quiet Turnhout street sets a relaxed, considered tone. Dress tidily rather than formally: neat casual works well here. This is not a room that demands a tie, but turning up in gym kit would feel out of place.
Book at least one to two weeks out. Amu is a small room with Michelin recognition and a strong local following, and booking difficulty is rated as easy — but that means availability moves quickly on weekends. Midweek slots are more forgiving.
The Michelin Bib Gourmand specifically rewards good cooking at prices below the threshold most Michelin-recognised restaurants charge, so the value case here is strong by definition. At a €€ price range, Amu sits at a level where the food-to-price ratio works in the diner's favour compared to most Belgian modern cuisine rooms.
Amu is a small room in a quiet Turnhout street, which limits capacity for larger parties. Groups of two to four will have no difficulty; larger groups should check the venue's official channels in advance to confirm whether the space can accommodate them and whether a set menu applies.
At €€ pricing with both a Bib Gourmand (2024) and a Michelin Plate (2025), Amu sits in the category of restaurants where the recognition outpaces the bill. For Turnhout specifically, there is no comparable local room with the same credentials at this price point. Worth it, provided modern cuisine is the format you want.
Yes, with a caveat on format: the intimate scale and Michelin recognition make Amu a credible choice for a birthday or anniversary dinner, but the small room means the atmosphere depends heavily on the full table and kitchen rhythm that evening. Book ahead, make the occasion known at the time of reservation, and it should deliver.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
