PIZZAS À-GO-GO
For many years I lived in a town of approximately 110-thousand inhabitants, and which today, harbours 44 registered pizzerias mostly with large seating areas. Parallel to seated diners, most of them also run a delivery service throughout the town. No, this isn’t Italy with its traditional and deliciously varied cuisine. This is Switzerland, tucked in between snow-capped mountains and famed for its cheese, chocolate and its own traditional food. I suppose it’s fair to say that pizzas, hamburgers and kababs filtered gradually into the Swiss gastronomic world, but it now seems to dominate every town and village. Even the most conventional Swiss restaurants tend to deviate towards a pizza variant on their menu, to cater for the most obsessed Italian devotees.
The illustrious Rösti, so typical of Switzerland, would previously never have failed to appear on the menu in most classical Swiss restaurants. Today, it is rare in normal eateries; because it appears to be too much effort. It’s far easier to cook large batches of pasta and heat up portions hastily in a pot of boiling water, as required, to accompany meat or fish. In order to appear professional, there is usually a cluster of underdone carrots and a soggy bush of broccoli. Another bone of contention is dessert. Even in winter, this consists mostly of some flavour of ice cream, with an accessory of sorts, even if it’s only a sprig of mint. I once ordered ice cream with hot berries, but the berries arrived cold, due to ‘a-couldn’t-care-less-cook’. In a renowned hotel in Zürich, on one occasion we went for Christmas dinner with a set menu. The food was pretty awful, but the dessert took the biscuit. I don’t recall how they labelled this particular dish, but it was a scoop of vanilla ice-cream surrounded by canned sweet corn and a blob of cream. Some Colombians, sitting at the adjacent table asked me if this was typically Swiss. I told them in my most polite Spanish, that I didn’t think it was typically anything. It’s not a delicacy I ever chose to replicate
This is my humble explanation for this plague of pizzerias throughout the land: In a local restaurant we frequent, there is one Pizzaiolo and two or three servers, depending on the day. This slender little man with an intense gaze and deep concentration, churns out large quantities of pizzas incessantly during his eight-hour shift. I used to make an effort to greet him upon entering the restaurant, but he only vaguely acknowledged me, so wrapped up in his world of dough and mozzarella, is he. He fetches his own wood for the oven and the ingredients he needs. He simply writes the shopping list for his supplies and hands it in. He is his own man and needs no one to run around for him. He causes no conflicts; he just gets on with his task of stoking the oven and making the pizzas.
Who can blame these restaurants? In these times of rising prices and personnel costs it takes significantly more staff to purchase, cook and serve a plate of orthodox Swiss food with meat and two veg. Then there’s the enormous stock of fresh meat, fish and vegetables needed, all with a limited shelf-life, to accommodate the public demand and tickle their fancy, to keep their punters coming back for more. It all needs to be bought, transported and a certain amount of skill is required to cook it. Then there are large quantities of washing-up that someone needs to do. Many restaurants keep the costs suppressed by employing foreign staff with backgrounds vastly different to our own. They are not trained chefs and they do their best, but the quality of the food is not always equivalent to the price for the customer.
Clearly, a thin layer of Pizza dough, with a suspicion of tomato and mozzarella adorned with a scanty layer of ‘something’ for twenty francs, yields a very healthy return. You pay extra for three additional tiny crumbs of gorgonzola or a weeny knob of anchovy. It must surely be the most lucrative invention ever. And the big advantage is that the eaters don’t hang around for long. One pizza and a pint of beer, and they’re on their way, making room speedily for the next customers. Many people with a limited capacity, have their left-overs packed up to take home for the next day, so the kitchen is not left with mountains of unwanted food.
Alas, I am not a pizza and pasta fan at all. Call me archaic, but I much prefer salad and meat or fish. But with this surge towards more simplified food, I’m afraid that the art of cooking my type of nutritional food is slowly deteriorating where I live. In a country where the average income is slightly higher than in our neighbouring countries, it could lead to more people eating out more often. We used to eat out two or three times a week, for convenience while I was working, however, for my part, regrettably, I generally eat better at home these days.
Pexels / Rodolfo Clix