Question for the Neuchers - we're going to be in Neuchâtel tomorrow for a day trip as NickatBaselJnr wants to try out his French. And we needed a change from a place with a few hills and a lake.
Was looking at Tripadvisor for decent spots to grab lunch and found this place has some good write-ups and it makes a change from the usual slabs of cheese covered meat:
I've been to Abyssinia before. Very warm & accommodating staff as I recall and good, not great, Ethiopian food. At lunch they had a buffet that included a lot of Indian food options and even rice so not your traditional Ethiopian/Eritrean resto
Thanks once again for the suggestions. We spent the morning strolling along the lake promenade, then sort of did one of the waymarked tourist strolls through the old town taking in the Château and the Tour de Prison.
There were not so many places open in the end - had not realised the Neuchers take Bertoldstag more seriously than the Zürchers. The Abyssinia was closed and frankly looked a bit shabby and uncared for from the outside, as if it has not been open for a while.
In the end we settled on Les Brasseurs for burgers, flammekuchen etc. Actually the service was friendly - our efforts at pidgin French were appreciated - and the food and beer were fine for our taste - and a shade cheaper than Zürich I felt.
I'm quite surprised that there was so much closed in Neuchâtel as Bertoldstag is not really taken seriously at all here. It was possibly the places which are normally closed on Mondays taking an extra day.
The out of town shopping centre was packed with cars from Bern, Fribourg, Vaud and Jura who all presumably had the day off.
The Abyssinia always looks like that from the outside even when it's open, it doesn't look very enticing at all which is probably why we've never tried it.
Although I know I'm a bit late to the thread but the Restaurant Du Peyrou was pleasantly nice and reasonably prices for a ponsy place (I'm more a KFC guy )
To be honest, my employer in Zurich has 2nd Jan as a day off - and many shops in Zurich City are open. So we generally treat it as a day to spend the Christmas money we got.
In Neuchâtel the larger shops were open - Migros, Coop and other well known chains. Presumably they have sufficient staff to draw upon to be able to open up.
Smaller shops tended to be closed. We looked for a bookshop so we could get my son some comics / Asterix books in French - we found quite a few antiquariat type places on our random wanderings. I’m sure Google would have found somewhere but I preferred to enjoy the town a bit rather than spend the time peering into a phone. The station kiosk had some Donald Duck books so mission accomplished.
It’s only an hour and a bit from Zurich HB and it was nice to see a different lake with different scenery.
Les Brasseurs has a fairly typical SwissPub menu - my burger was a proper homemade one, cooked medium rare and the chips were crispy. The other food coming out of the kitchen looked nicely prepared and fresh.