At the age of 17, Antoine Pinto arrived as a political refugee from the Portugese regime, in Liège (Belgium). He enters the Académie des Beaux-Arts where he studies architectural interior design.
Raised in a bourgeois Portugese family where good food was an important aspect of daily life, he soon discovers the pleasures of yet another way of artistic expression, the art of cooking. He opens his first restaurant in 1976 and by the year 1981, the Besser Guide (the German equivalent of the Guide Gault-Millau) proclaimes Antoine Pinto one of Central Europe’s hundred best chefs.
Seducing gourmets with his haute cuisine, he remains nevertheless a fully qualified artist in heart and soul.
Every space he creates captures the eye before the taste buds are conquered. Founder of more than 100 gastronomic hotspots, Antoine Pinto is the man behind such celebrated places as Dock’s Café (Antwerp), Pakhuis (Ghent), La Quincaillerie and the Pasta Commedia (Brussels), the Ostend Queen, Sofitel Toison d’Or, Vendôme project (Brussels), the lobby lounge of the hospital Saint-Michel (Brussels), Alcantara Café (Lisbon) … and, of course, his flagships : the Belga Queen Ghent and Belga Queen Brussels.
“The key to my success? There is really no recipe. I offer more pleasure, more dreams and more quality.”
And that is exactly what we need at the beginning of the 21st century.