Where should I eat in Bruges, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

The rule of Bruges dining is geographic: the Markt's terraces sell the view, and the cooking improves with every street you move away from it. The city's canon begins with stoofvlees — Flemish beef carbonnade, slow-braised in dark beer with onions, mustard and a slice of spice bread — served with the city's other sacrament, frieten: Belgian fries, twice-cooked (first blanched, then crisped, traditionally in beef tallow), with mayonnaise as of right. The Frietmuseum, the world's only fry museum, occupies a 14th-century hall on the Vlamingstraat for the full theology. For the classic brasserie circuit, the lanes around 't Zand and the Simon Stevinplein hold the locals' tables; the city's fine dining peaks at De Jonkman (two Michelin stars, just outside the center in Sint-Kruis) and Sans Cravate (one star, in the Langestraat quarter).

Chocolate is the edible souvenir and Bruges is one of its capitals, with more than 50 chocolatiers in the center. The two poles: Dumon, the family house in a storybook stone building by the Markt, for immaculate pralines (the filled chocolates Belgium invented — Jean Neuhaus created the praline in Brussels in 1912, and the ballotin box followed in 1915); and The Chocolate Line, Dominique Persoone's laboratory in the Simon Stevinplein, where the fillings run to bacon, wasabi and fried onion alongside the classics, and the kitchen is glass-walled so you can watch. Buy small boxes, eat them within days, and know that Belgian law-grade quality means real cocoa butter — the industrial bars at the airport are a different species.

Beer closes the day, and Bruges brews its own: De Halve Maan, in the Walplein since 1856, is the last working brewery in the old center — its Brugse Zot ("Bruges Fool," named for the city's nickname, earned when the townsfolk asked Maximilian for a new madhouse and were told to close the city gates) is the house blond, and its Straffe Hendrik the strong tripel. In 2016 the brewery completed one of brewing's great stunts: a beer pipeline, roughly two miles (3.2 km) of pipe carrying beer from the old-center brewery to its bottling plant outside the ring, partly crowdfunded by locals who bought lifetime beer rights. Tour the brewery, then end at 't Brugs Beertje, the little brown bar behind the Markt that has poured some 300 Belgian beers since 1983 — the connoisseur's classroom, in a city whose beer culture UNESCO inscribed in 2016.

Inside De Halve Maan's courtyard at noon: copper kettles through the doorway, the smell of malt over the Walplein, a tulip of Brugse Zot foaming on the terrace — and somewhere below the cobbles, a pipeline of beer flowing out of the Middle Ages toward the bottling plant.

Bruges has a second confectionery heritage that chocolate overshadowed: lace and speculoos aside, the city's oldest sweet shop tradition is the babelutte — a butter-and-brown-sugar toffee from neighboring Moerkerke, sold in Bruges sweet shops for over a century — and the local waffle worth seeking is not the tourist-grid version but the lighter Brussels-style wafel dusted with sugar at the market stalls. Ask a chocolatier for babelutten and watch the nod you get: it is the password of the non-tourist sweet tooth.

• Frites first — A cone from a proper frituur at the Markt's green carts or the Frietmuseum quarter, eaten standing, resets the afternoon
• Chocolate in the morning — Dumon and The Chocolate Line before the tour groups; buy the box you will eat, not the box you will ship
• Brewery, then brown bar — De Halve Maan's last tour, then 't Brugs Beertje after dinner for the deep list

The Markt and Rozenhoedkaai restaurants run tourist pricing and tourist pacing — the same stew is better and cheaper two streets north. De Halve Maan's tours sell out in season and the brewery's last entry is mid-afternoon. Belgian kitchens keep Belgian hours: lunch 12–2, dinner from 6, many closed Sundays or Mondays, and the best brasseries do not seat walk-ins on Ascension or summer weekends without a booking.

Reserve one brasserie and one splurge (De Jonkman or Sans Cravate) before arrival, put De Halve Maan on a weekday, and let chocolate happen twice.