Portfolio - Special Edition Switzerland

16 Special Edition Switzerland Food ordered a bottle of wine on a Tuesday afternoon. From the kitchen, wafts of garlic, fish, and smoked duck filled the air while we continued to discuss the food of the Romandie. “The food here is French. But we’re only 90 minutes from Italy, so don’t underestimate the Italian influences,” says Angela enthusiastically. “And we all know the Italians taught the French how to cook,” she says smiling, gesturing with her two open hands as my fish soup and saffron mayonnaise arrived. “But the Germans,” she says wagging her finger. “We didn’t teach them.” STARTERS AND MAINS There are no shortages of cosy wine taverns and auberges with crackling fireplaces in the Swiss Riviera. But one place is iconic just outside Lausanne: Crissier’s Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville, one of only three three-starred Michelin restaurants in the country. Dishes like caramelized scallops with local reduction of chasselas wine, hare à la royale, and alpine chamois with a wild green pepper sauce were not things you’d ever see on my side of the röstigraben. Chef Franck Giovannini’s 11-course tasting menu is a treasure trove of nostalgia and flavor, riffing on French haute with heavy punches of alpine resourcefulness. If that weren’t opulent enough, just a few kilometres away is another temple to haute cuisine: the two Michelin-star Anne-Sophie Pic. It is located inside Lausanne’s iconic Beau-Rivage Palace, a Belle Epoque masterpiece of hospitality with white marble and Corinthian columned ballrooms overlooking the city’s leafy Olympic Park shoreline. The menu takes inspiration from local produce with flowery spinoffs like a soft boiled egg with baby cabbage, roast geranium, and sudachi foam, or blue lobster with nasturtium coulis and cinnamon consommé. Serve that in austere Zürich, Spartan Lucerne, or even French-bordering Basel and inevitably someone would complain that it was too bold, not disciplined enough, or trying too hard. Fortunately, I also learn that you need not pay the prices at the big power star grabbers to experience good food in the Romandie. Relaxed taverns, bustling brasseries and bistros, and charming auberges can be found all over the region and have been some of my most memorable meals over the years. Brasserie de Montbenon, located in a carved-out hall inside Lausanne’s casino, is bustling and chock full of the city’s jeunesse dorée (young and wealthy) dining on vol au vents stuffed with creamy sauces, mushroom cassoulets, and beef tartars washed down with bottles of wine. Montreux’s La Rouvenaz offers French brasserie classics with a handful of Italian trattoria dishes— raw oysters, steak de bœuf, veal stews, and homemade pasta are edifying and unapologetically caloric and carby. Auberge du Raisin in the charming Lavaux town of Cully is a longtime personal favourite and delivers doses of old world dining that is rapidly disappearing. The floors are stone and worn. The wood panelling and parquet ceiling is marinated in decades of fondue steam. And fussy suited waiters char aged steaks on the dining room’s fireplace, prepare flambés table-side by, and drench morels and white asparagus in Mornay sauce from silver gravy boats sur la table. This is the eating I’d expected from Europeans. The culture of living for food is what Angela feels is misunderstood by the Swiss Germans. CAVE AND WINE No visit to French-speaking Switzerland is complete with a visit to one of its wineries. Switzerland is also home to over 20 wine appellations, found in almost every canton, including urban wine appellations in Geneva, Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Lucerne, and high altitude wines that stretch to the heavens like Machu Picchu in Canton Valais. There are over 200 grape varieties grown in Switzerland, but the nomenclature of grape names vary from region to region. What’s called Chasselas in Canton Vaud is called Fendant in Canton Valais. What’s more confusing is that unlike its neighbours in Germany, Austrian France, and Italy, Switzerland doesn’t have a centralized wine body, so grape expressions and growing methods are different, too. The country notoriously only exports 1% of its production, and you have quite a rarefied product. Luckily for the hardworking winemakers, Swiss wines have been gaining popularity after renown oenophiles and critics from Wine Advocate and the Financial Times lauded them repeatedly in the last decade. And celebrity chefs and sommeliers have been stocking them in the cellars more and more. By far, the most famous wine in all of Switzerland is Chasselas, known for its stony, gunpowder characteristics, which French-speaking Swiss call pierre à fusil, an old aristocratic term which translates to musket flint. While many Swiss people would not agree about the grape’s nomenclature, almost all Swiss agree that the Chasselas is the only wine that should be consumed with fondue, a rule seldom broken. I tried to bend this rule after moving here, but failed time and again. But let my mistake be your lesson. The only thing worse than asking for red wine with your fondue is asking for soda which is borderline criminal. Regardless of which side of the röstigraben you’re on, locals will tell you that a cold beverage will harden the melted cheese in your stomach, a frequently heard line with zero science to back it up. Some things do cross over. And since chasselas is generally so refreshing and nicely paired with cheese, it’s seldom worth arguing over. The Swiss also produce excellent blauburgunder (Pinot Noir) in Cantons Graubunden and Schaffhausen, and fine white and red Merlot in Italian- speaking Ticino. You can find those in the Romandie too. Still, visiting oenophiles will want to focus on and seek out lesser- known dry mineral varietals like Amigne, Dôle Blanche, Petite Arvine, Heida, and Sylvaner, (or Païen and Johannisberg if you’re speaking upper Valesian dialect). Reds like Humagne Rouge, Dôle Carminoir, Durize, Eyholzer Roter Ermitage, Doral, Gamey, and even ancient Lémanic reds like the Plant Robert varietal are unusual and worth bagging a bottle or two.