Waffles

When I was growing up in Antwerp, there were distinctive scents in the air that defined the smell of the city for me. The first and most dominant was the scent of caramelising sugar and a whiff of cinnamon from the waffle irons that turned out Liège waffles all day, every day. When exiting our majestic central station, onto the ‘Champs Élysées’ of Antwerp, you would be greeted with this sweet scent, and by the time it had worn off and you reached the large Meir shopping street, the smell of the next waffle baker would greet you. The Meir is about 550 metres (600 yards) long and used to house three or four waffle bakers. Their little shabby makeshift shops squeezed into small spaces that could just fit one human, a waffle iron and a fridge to keep the waffle dough. These waffle shops were not at all nostalgic or authentic, but they were there for my formative years.