Low-key Swiss Cuisine
A phenomenon of modern life is the sheer lack of effort made by some people who claim to love their profession. As they say, the onlooker sees most of the game, so, as spectators, we continuously form opinions about performances we analytically observe. Sometimes we don’t consciously analyse people and their actions, but we simply expect certain results in exchange for the price we have paid. An area where I am relentlessly disenchanted is the price-performance ratio in the gastronomy industry in the Zurich area of Switzerland.
Far from being the pioneers of culinary pleasures, the cooks seem to have taken the line of least resistance. In a town for example, with 110’000 residents, there are 38 officially registered pizzerias. I accept the fact that a bit of dough, smeared with tomato, some mozzarella and another ingredient yields an enormous profit. I understand that a lot of people eat pizza, but not every day and not at 20 Francs a go. It simply seems a lazy man’s way of making a lot of money. I don’t eat pizza or kebab, so I am on the lookout for a sit-down meal that I really enjoy.
I miss the innovative restaurants they have in other countries, where it’s a pure pleasure to go out to eat. The label that many pure Swiss restaurants award themselves: «Good Middle Class» is intended to give you the optimistic foretaste of pure quality. It is in fact the revelation of the same old dishes grandma used to wheel out in a steady flow. Many restaurants haven’t changed their menu at all for many years, let alone adapting it from season to season. In fact, you could almost take a photocopy of a menu from one restaurant to most of the others and you won’t find a lot of deviation between them, except in the price. Rösti is of course the standard potato delight, without guaranteeing the standard result. Many a desolate heap of soggy, oily potatoes has been served up, under the guise of rösti, and not without a forbidding glare if one returns said dish to the kitchen. The other variation is dark brown (burnt) on the outside and raw potatoes in the centre. But hey-ho, why let these intricacies interfere with your enjoyment?
The desert menu is of course in most cases, not the crowning glory to your Swiss feast. It comprises often, exclusively some form of component from the deep freeze. I did once have the dubious pleasure of a desert in a famous Swiss hotel at Christmas. The title was misleading, but hey-ho, I was feeling adventurous. What arrived on the plate, entirely naked and devoid of any attempt to embellish it was corn (straight from the tin) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was unbelievable and frankly a gross insult to paying guests.
Many of my colleagues and friends have given up eating out, because although they would normally love to do so, and they don’t always want to cook, they feel they are being taken for a ride. When you fork out 55-60 francs for a normal steak and you are charged 8 francs more for chips in a very ordinary eatery, you know your digestion will take longer to settle down. It’s always a pure pleasure to eat out when we are abroad however. The food is mostly delicious, because we are selective with the restaurants we choose, and the prices are a fraction of the prices we pay at home.
We would love to find more «normal» restaurants around where we live, where the cuisine is good and the prices fair. We would like to have the feeling that the cook takes pride in his work, that the decor is inviting, the menu is original and innovative and the plate of food is tasty and reflects just that.cI apologise to any restaurants in my area, who do go the extra mile and have simply stayed under my radar. Please feel free to tell me about you and your restaurant, and I will certainly be a willing customer.
Photo: Pexels / Tom Balabaud