A less perfect lunch

Last week I walked up to Alpenrösli in Klosters with a friend of mine to have lunch on their terrace and also to see what the new owners had done with the place. I barely recognised the it: terrace, restaurant, hotel rooms - everything has been completely redone. Unfortunately any charm the place had is gone. It now looks like a typical mountain restaurant next to the skiing station, quite sterile and cold. The furniture on the terrace does not invite to stay and enjoy the view, although people come to Alpenrösli to do exactly that.
The day we were there was glorious and sunny but extremely cold. We asked for woolly blankets to cover our legs and were told that they didn't have any. Blankets would be a small investment for a restaurant that is famous for its terrace and spectacular views - people want to sit outside even in winter!

I heard from a few sides that dinner at Alpenrösli is very good. The lunch menu however was quite uninspired and featured the usual Bündnergerstensuppe, Bündnerplatte etc., but the food was well prepared and tasted good.

Käseschnitte with fried egg and Walliser Wurst with Rösti

I will continue going to Alpenrösli - the view over Klosters and the surrounding mountains remains unchanged, but it's not what it used to be.

www.alpenroesli-klosters.ch

Another perfect lunch in Klosters

 

- Nüsslisalat mit Speck und Ei - Lambs Lettuce with Bacon and Egg -

- Ein Dutzend Schnecken mit Kräutern und Knoblauch - A Dozen Snails with Herbs and Garlic -

Restaurant Wynegg

Landstrasse 205

7250 Klosters

+41 81 422 13 40

Should you be in Klosters...

... go to Walserhof for lunch.
The restaurant is known to be the only one in the village that ever holds Michelin stars, currently one for Chef Armin Amrein. The adjacent hotel is known to regularly accommodate Prince Charles and Co, although they haven't been in town for a while.
So you can image that dinners can be quite costly. But a three course lunch menu costs 49.- and is of highest quality! The menu changes every day. If you don't go crazy with wine it's a very good deal!

I had delicious Watercress Soup with Scampi for Starter (I forgot to take a picture).
The main course was breast of quail with pine nut crust and papaya relish.

For dessert I chose a selection of cheeses with a local pear bread - 'Nidle Flade' and fig chutney.

www.walserhof.ch

Three beautiful Cafe Lattes!

www.restaurant-markthalle.ch

Sunday in London

I miss Sundays in London the most! In Switzerland people spend Sundays at home preparing for the working week ahead. Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but sometimes it feels like that when I walk around the empty streets of Zurich.
In London friends meet up, wander around the markets together or go to the pub for a lovely roast lunch, a glass of wine and hung over conversation. Or people cook a roast at home for family and friends. In London Sunday is about enjoying a day off and spending time with loved ones.

Sunday lunch at the Lansdowne Pub in Primrose Hill

www.thelansdownepub.co.uk

Salty chilli squid

Vietnamese salty chilli squid might just be my favourite dish ever! Unfortunately not to be found in Zurich. So when I'm in London I have to eat salty chilli squid at least once, preferably at Cay Tre on Old Street, my favourite Vietnamese restaurant where I had lunch every day for months on end when I was working round the corner.

http://www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk/caytre/

Alp Garfiun in Winter

It has almost become a tradition that we (my parents and any brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews that are around) take a horse drawn sleigh to Alp Garfiun on 26th December.

Pferdekutschen Flütsch

www.pferdekutschen.ch

www.garfiun.ch

Once there we eat a hearty Bünder Gerstensuppe with sausage, some Alpine cheese, Bündnerfleisch and Salsiz. I can't think of a better way to spend the second day of Christmas!

Trout again

Clearly I like to eat trout - it's pretty much the only fish I ever write about.
I recommend the trout dish they are currently serving at Restaurant Volkshaus in Zurich:

http://www.restaurantvolkshaus.ch/

The best burger of my life and other Geneva tips

I recently spent a couple of days in Geneva for the wedding of two friends of mine. The wedding was a culinary delight but I was so busy taking pictures of the wedding for the couple that the camera's battery was empty by the time dinner was served (luckily I wasn't the official wedding photographer!).
So all I have are a couple of links:

1) Dinner was at Les Bains des Paquis, which is part of the Lake Geneva Lido, where people swim in summer and go to the hammam in winter. They serve Champagne Fondue in their pop up restaurant during winter. Service is chaotic but the atmosphere lovely - the tiled changing cubicles serve as mini cloakrooms. And the fondue is one of the best I've ever had - the champagne makes it much 'lighter' than normal fondue. http://www.buvettedesbains.ch/pages/fondue.html

2) The wedding cakes (s - there were three huge ones, no chance that we could eat them all. Luckily we were given some to take home the next day, which we ate in the car while stuck in traffic between Geneva and Zurich...)

The wedding cake was definitely the best I've ever had! I'm not that into sweet things, especially not creamy, chocolatey cakes, but this one was a whole different story. It had one layer that tasted a bit like the filling of Kinder Schokolade and a lovely crunchy, very moreish layer.
It seems that the Chocolatier who made the cake doesn't have a website, so here a link with all infos: http://www.itaste.com/list/restaurant/de/geneve/christophe-berger-confiserie-patisserie.html

The day after the wedding we sat in Cafe Remor all day with people, food and coffee coming and going. They had the normal selection of bistro type food like soups, hot and cold sandwiches, salades, quiche, croque monsieur and a selection of burgers with special ingredients: lamb burgers, different chutneys and sauces, grilled peppers etc. All burgers were served in a poppy seed bun and with salade and baby potatoes. It was by far the best burger I've ever had!!!

http://www.remor.ch/

Food and memories

Few things bring back memories the way food can.

In September I was in New York for a few days to visit family and friends. I spent a morning at the Neue Galerie enjoying the Klimts and Schieles (I've been obsessed with the art, design and architecture of the Wiener Secession lately and I love Schiele!). While I was waiting for my sister-in-law to join me I felt a pang of hunger and so I went to the Café Sabarsky for breakfast. Just reading the menu made me feel homesick and made me think about and miss so many places I love: Vienna, the childhood holidays spent in the Austrian countryside, breakfasts in Berlin (the capital of breakfasts - at least it was until not too long ago...) At first I couldn't decide what to order there were so many amazing breakfasts on offer: Kaiserschmarrn, Weisswurst, Eier im Glas... I had to go for the latter, one of my all time favorites! It seems it's not a frequently ordered dish - all the wonderful Upper East Side Ladies oohed and aahed when it arrived and looked very surprised to see peeled eggs in a Martini glass:

http://www.neuegalerie.org/cafes/sabarsky

I had a food and memory experience this summer. I was roadtripping around Central and Eastern Europe with two friends of mine, who also thoroughly enjoy food... Everywhere we went we bought a few things at local supermarkets to take home with us. Austria was paradise for this - we bought amazing Kürbiskernöl (pumpkin seed oil), Powidl (plum jam) and Schokobananen. As a kid my family spent every summer holiday in the Austrian countryside with friends in their countryside house. The house is right next to a forest and mountain a few kilometers away form the next village. Lunches and dinners consisted of fish freshly caught by my dad and his friend KTh and rarely a deer they hunted and of the herbs and veggies Gigi (KTh's wife) grew in her vegetable garden. A couple of times a week we would drive into town to buy everything else we needed including Schokobananen - the most horrible, artificial, yellow, gooey stuff covered in chocolate. Us kids loooooved them and luckily KTh did too. Every evening after dinner he would get out one and cut it in slices - one per person. Which meant that every person got an approximately 0.8 cm slice of chocolate banana...

Eating and drinking in Turin

Despite the constant rain the week in Turin was a joy! Mainly because of the great food we ate.
One restaurant I highly recommend is Il Gatto Nero. We went there twice and not only because the restaurant was next to our hotel, but because it was fantastic. Service was slow (and approx. 80 years old), but when one of the waiters asked us whether his father had already taken our order our hearts were warmed and we didn't mind waiting. Maybe it was also the most amazing wine we drank!

 Il Gatto Nero

Corso Filippo Turati 14

 Torino

+39 011 5900414

One thing we were looking forward to all week was Pasta con Tartufo - truffle pasta. Unfortunately the weather has been very dry the past months so there have been very little truffles so far these season, which means they are small, expensive and maybe not as tasty as they could be. Hopefully the current down pours will change the situation.
For one of our last dinners we went to Da Michele and finally found what we were hoping for:

 Da Michele

 Piazza Vittorio Veneto 4

Torino

 +39 011 888836

Third Lobster in Maine: Lunch on the way to the airport

We left Christmas Cove with a heavy heart and full of plans to come back next year for a couple of weeks during the summer. Our spirits were lifted by one last lobster before we were back to reality. We stopped in lovely Wiscasset. We had noticed when passing a couple of times the day before that there was one lobster shack that had a very long queue of people waiting to order. It was the same when we got there. As we had flights and coaches to catch we decided to go to another shack just across the street directly on the water. We were not disappointed - the lobster was fantastic!!! We devoured it as if it was our last meal ever.

 

http://www.hollyeats.com/Spragues.htm

 Before:

After:

First Lobster in Maine - Lunch

When in Maine eat lobster! I very much had the intention to as many as I possibly could during my two day stay.
I went to Pemaquid Coop right by Pemaquid Harbor overlooking the water with two friends. It was a glorious day, the sun shining, the sky blue and with amazing views. We felt so happy and relaxed!

We had lobster rolls and whole lobster and everything was so delicious, I still dream of it!

If you are ever in Maine, which I highly recommend you must come here for lunch!
www.pemaquidlobstercoop.com

Breakfast in Christmas Cove, Maine

I spent last weekend in Christmas Cove, a tiny village by the water in South Bristol, Maine. A friend of mine celebrated her wedding there. With some help from my jet lag I got up very early the first day and went for breakfast at the closest diner: Harborside Cafe. It was the perfect start to my day! I was greeted in such a friendly upbeat way by mother and son team who run the place, immediately offered tea of coffee and enjoyed delicious cheese omelette with bacon and English muffins.

http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/207/1053493/restaurant/Maine/Harborside-Grocery-Grill-South-Bristol

(The place is too small for its website.)

Hamburg: Fischereihafen Restaurant

In Hamburg we were greeted by very typical weather: wind, grey skies, constant drizzle and low temperatures. After a day of walking around the city and taking a boat around the port in these conditions we went for a well deserved,  absolutely amazing and delicious dinner at the Fischereihafen Restaurant. It was one of the culinary highlights of the journey so far. Service was impeccable and very friendly, every dish was outstanding and prices were fair (EUR 70 per person for aperitif, starter, main, dessert, and two bottles of wine)

Tuna tartar on roasted black bread with soy sauce and ginger (I still dream of this!)

 

'Fischereihafenteller': smoked eel on scrambled eggs with herbs, crispy king prawn, tuna tartar, smoked salmon, herring in curry sauce

Lobster soup

 Freshly caught plaice with bacon and potatoe salad

 Scottish salmon filet with chanterelles and parsley potatoes

Truffel cheese with fig mustard

Lemon sorbet with Vodka

Semolina flummery with rum cherries and walnut ice cream

www.fischereihafenrestaurant.de

Munich II

Of course we had to have a proper Munich breakfast: Weisswurst, Brezn, süsser Senf and a Weissbier at the Restaurant Zum Franziskaner...

...followed by Kaiserschmarrn with Apfelmus and coffee!

www.zum-franziskaner.de

Road Trip!: Klosters

After months of waiting and planning and getting overly excited I finally set off on a road trip with friends yesterday. Our first destination was Klosters, where we went for a walk to Alp Garfiun despite the rain and fog.

www.garfiun.ch

After a fast paced walk we well deserved a platter of  'Bündnerfleisch, Rohschinken and Alpkäse' with some gherkins and a glass of red wine.

In the evening we grilled sausages in the fireplace. The sausages came from Macelleria Salumeria Fulvi on Schöneggstrasse 28, one of the best butchers in Zurich!

For dessert we had baked apples and a Zwetschgen Schnaps. Both came from Hof Blum in Samstagern where we had stopped earlier in the day to see 'The Garden of Forking Paths', an exhibition organised by Migros Museum. www.hofblum.ch We made a hole in the apples, stuffed it with butter and sugar, wrapped the apples in tin folio and left them in the fire for 15 minutes - delicious!!!

Trout in Schlappin Tal

Yesterday I went for a walk in the beautiful Schlappin Tal with my parents and a friend.

We had wonderful trout at Berghaus Erika: http://www.schlappin.ch/sommer/index.html