Antwerp, NY has a population of 575 and is the 18,704th largest city in the United States. The population density is 573 per sq mi which is 60% higher than the New York average and 533% higher than the national average. Antwerp Population 2018 Antwerp is a city that is located in Belgium. It is the capital of the Antwerp province, and it is also the most populous city proper in the entire country. The City of Antwerp or with its local Dutch name: ”Antwerpen” is the capital of Antwerp Province with an estimated population of 520.000 people if you count.

The oldest restaurant in the city (1750) is the seafood-centric Rooden Hoed, whose six mussel dishes are ranked among the best in this mussel-mad city. But on a recent visit I found it a poorly run, badly serviced tourist spot that served a bowl of mussels in which many of them came with their shells shut, a sure sign they were dead before they hit the cooking pot. I was also alerted by locals that the well-known Elfde Gebod (The Eleventh Commandment) next to the Cathedral is not as good as it once was and may be reserved just for a peek at the interior arrayed with religious artwork and a Trappist Westmalle dubbel beer.

De Groote Witte Arend dates to 1488 as a convent but since 1976 as beer hall and restaurant, now owned by Tim and Ronald Ferket, who serve up very hearty Belgian fare like beef stew with potato croquettes; sautéed plaice with mashed potatoes, a loin of pork and some delicious eel baked in cream. They carry 280 beers.

A vast bistro with an international menu, Horta is right down the street from the Rubens House museum.

More contemporary spots have gleaned a lot of global cuisines, as has Horta, just down the street from the Rubenshuis museum. It’s a massive place set on two tiers, with outdoor dining, and the menu is just as large, with few dishes that are truly Belgian. That said, I did enjoy the crisp and meaty shrimp croquettes and a tempura of shrimp. A slice of foie gras was good and a traditional waterzooi made with tender chicken was both delicious and abundant in size.

The new Hotel Franq is centrally located but has a quite interior and impressive lobby.

Certainly the most impressive meal I had in Antwerp was at the restaurant in the newly opened Franq Hotel, where I also stayed. Quietly located on a street away from the center and overlooking a lovely garden with one of the city’s oldest houses at the end, the hotel has all the modern amenities and a splendid lobby, though some rooms are small. The restaurant is very bright at lunch, with superb modern lighting, and the outdoor tables are becoming equally popular.

The restaurant at the Franq Hotel is located just off a garden and takes in the city's sunlight.

Chef Tim Meuleneire, formerly at the highly regarded Restaurant De Koopvaardij in Stabruek, Belgium, is proving himself one of the best in the country with a light cuisine based on the season’s best provender, beginning with the fat white asparagus that were then at their sweetest in May, with a browned gratin of parmesan cheese and a slick of olive oil. Red gunard and razor clams were delicately poached in a dashi broth, while whitefish came with a spicy seasoned salad. For dessert, the iced coffee was a perfect midday sweet.

2018 Population Of States

Chef Tim Meuleneire at the Franq Restaurant cooks seasonally, as with these white asparagus gratin.

Population Of The World 2018

There is a two-course lunch at €35; dinner €65. It’s open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

Graanmarkt 13 is set on two levels, with a small garden patio.

Graanmarkt 13 is also a new spot, set downstairs from a market square near Rubenshuis, functioning as a store, restaurant and apartment in a building designed by one of Belgian’s finest architects, Vincent Van Duysen. The seductive lighting in the main dining room gives way to a tiny outdoor patio with a single Godot-like tree.

The menu by Chef Seppe Nobels revels in vegetable dishes and is set each week, with few choices focused on lamb or Dover sole or whatever the chef wishes to make that night, which will include herbs from his rooftop garden. I enjoyed a very pretty carpaccio of beets, as well as Little Gem lettuce with a dash of hoisin sauce and lime. Then a plate of fat Dover sole simply sautéed in butter. A lamb fillet in puff pastry was accompanied by rhubarb and a perfectly rendered reduction of its juices. A pork belly with fennel-flavored sausage had plenty of richness, accompanied by braised spiced carrots. That night they were serving three raw milk cheeses from the Schoonvliet dairy in Beveren, one of them voted the “best bleu in the world.”

Nobels is also having fun with a food truck for fine fast fare, parked right outside the restaurant upstairs. Lunch €35, dinner €45. Open Mon.-Sat. for lunch and dinner.

The chief attraction os RAS is its location atop the Zuiderterras project designed by Flemish Master Architect Bob Van Reeth, overlooking the river.

Overlooking the River Scheldt, RAS is atop the Zuiderterras project designed by Flemish Master Architect Bob Van Reeth, who began it in the 1990s and has altered and restored it several times since. As RAS, it is the work of the Co.Studio. I tell you all that because it is a very pleasant outdoor place to dine, all very modernistic and sleek, but the menu is a fairly standard rendering of contemporary global cuisine, with a slight nod to Belgium found in the food shrimp croquettes with fried parsley (€16.50). Otherwise, as you enjoy the view and one of the many Belgian beers stocked here, you should be happy with dishes like the Hereford beef carpaccio, summer truffle, parmesan, grilled pine kernels and rocket salad (€18); baby soles meunière with garden cress, mashed potatoes or French fries (€29.50); and for dessert a Belgian chocolate mousse (€10).

RAS is very popular for all the visible reasons. I’d go back for a cocktail or a beer and some light food while watching the sun set over the river. Open for lunch and dinner daily.

A country probably has to admit to a drugs problem when even its wildlife is on cocaine. As of yesterday morning, an online petition calling on the Belgian government to protect the country's racing pigeons from being doped with performance-enchancing cocaine was 200 shy of its target of 45,000 signatures.

That nefarious pigeon fanciers have apparently been using the drug as their doping agent of choice is a reminder that a nation often pilloried for being boring is also partial to South America's most notorious export.

According to last month's Global Drug Survey, Belgians are the most enthusiastic consumers of cocaine in the world, giving the drug a rating of 5.5/10 compared with just 2.2/10 from Australians, who rated it the least highly.

And last week a scientific analysis of wastewater samples in 45 European cities, conducted between 2011 and 2013 and weighted against the size of their respective populations, concluded that the Belgian port city of Antwerp – not London, as widely reported in the British press – is Europe's cocaine capital.

The hipster district of Antwerp Zuid, a well-heeled place where bars and galleries give way to vintage shops and furniture stores, knocked Amsterdam into second place when it came to the amount of benzoylecgonine – the metabolised compound cocaine forms after it has been in the human body – washing through its sewerage system. Zurich was third and London fourth.

And yet a visitor to the city, home to Rubens and famed for its diamond trade, would find it hard to reconcile genteel Antwerp with its position at the top of the cocaine charts.

Dominated by cycling lanes and tramways, it is a city of green spaces and elegant buildings. Lavender plants fill its traffic islands; people wait for the green man to appear before crossing the road; the police stop traffic so that hundreds of cyclists towing children in small buggies can stage a public protest. Even Antwerp's famed red-light district, reputedly home to one of the biggest brothels in Europe, draws as many curious middle-aged tourists as stag parties.

No wonder many are reluctant to confront Antwerp's edgy reputation. Several Belgian politicians approached for comment declined to discuss the matter. Even those familiar with Antwerp's drug scene were shocked by the claims made for its cocaine usage. 'There just aren't more people here doing cocaine than, say, in Brussels or Rotterdam,' said Joep Oomen, who runs a cannabis social club that represents some 300 adults legally allowed to grow the drug to meet their personal needs.

Nevertheless, he concedes that cocaine is more popular now than when he came to Antwerp 22 years ago. 'It's cheap here, too. When I was 20, cocaine was for people in Hollywood. Not any more.'

According to the Global Drug Survey, Belgium is the cheapest country in western Europe to buy cocaine. Local people say that dealers on De Coninckplein, a small, cafe-lined square, close to its Chinese quarter, charge as little as €50 (£40)a gram, half the European average.

Received wisdom suggests Antwerp's proximity to its port, the second busiest in Europe after Rotterdam, ensures a cheap supply of coke, which in turn drives demand.

But Steve Rolles of Transform, a thinktank that advocates reform of the drugs laws, said the truth was more complex: 'If there's a demand for a drug, then availability will follow. I mean, it's not like there's a lot of cocaine in Southampton, for example. There has to be something in the social fabric of the place that drives demand.'

In the case of Antwerp, a city once famous for its merchants, this something appears to be a new era of embourgeoisement. The Ferraris, Porsches and Jaguars snaking their way past Antwerp's boutique designer shops suggest it is a place on the up.

'Twenty years ago Antwerp was a lot more empty,' said Oomen, who puts the city's renaissance down to European integration. 'The Flemish region is booming.'

A rising middle class and cocaine use appear to be inextricably linked. 'Cocaine is popular here, but it is a drug for professionals with money,' said Katerine, a student drinking in a bar close to Antwerp Zuid's film museum. 'Young people will do cannabis or pills. It is the architects, journalists, lawyers and politicians who do coke.'

Daniel, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, suggested the city's rising affluence had seen it become a popular weekend destination for Europe's upwardly mobile, for whom cocaine was now an essential part of their tourist experience. 'People come in by plane, by yacht, by boat, by train. You can get here quickly in a car from Holland or France. It's a beautiful city and people want to have a good time when they're here.'

The city's reputation as a cocaine hotspot threatens to turn the clock back to the start of the millennium, when it attracted narco-tourists from northern France seeking to score cheap heroin.

Keen to avoid history repeating itself, last year Antwerp's mayor, Bart De Wever, declared war on the illegal drugs scene, tripling the size of the city's drugs squad from 15 to 45 officers and pledging 'zero tolerance'. He has set himself a formidable challenge. Few cities in the world are as immersed in the cocaine trade as Antwerp.

Around 25% of the cocaine moving from South America into Europe passes through Belgium. And most of this comes through Antwerp's port, the 'supermarket of Europe', which has 140,000 employees and 160km of quayside. But only around 2% of the 8m containers passing through the port each year are screened.

'Screening is far from watertight,' said Tom Feiling, author of The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World. 'Law enforcement want us to think that they know the size and scale of cocaine coming in, but the reality is that they just don't know.'

The US State Department estimates that around 20 tonnes of cocaine comes through the port annually. But some studies suggest it could be 30 tonnes or higher. Certainly the cocaine cartels are becoming more ambitious. Two years ago the city's port authorities seized a record eight tonnes of cocaine with a street value of €500m, hidden in a container of bananas shipped from Ecuador.

Last year it emerged that hackers, working with the cartels, had breached the IT systems controlling the movement of shipping containers in the port so that they could remove them before they were searched. 'It sounds like fantasy and science fiction, but it's the reality,' said Calum MacLeod, who is a security expert at Lieberman Software Corporation.

At one time the wholesale trafficking of cocaine through the port was performed almost exclusively by Colombian drug cartels. But, according to a recent article in the Journal of Drug Issues, gangs from Albania and the Philippines are now muscling in. They are aware that Europe will soon outstrip the United States as the main market for cocaine.

All of which means that picturesque, prosperous Antwerp is unlikely to shed its relationship with cocaine any time soon.