I have to agree that the food in general is not great but I've lived in places where it's a lot worse. I tend to cook for my self so I have no one else to blame for the gruel.
As for the Gürkli well i could live without them and when my kids are here I overdose as I have to eat theirs too!!
Living in Lugano most of the food is italian so it aint too bad, what I really miss is the take aways, I never thought I'd find myself craving kentucky friend Chicken :P And I have no idea why the pizza places do not deliver.
Theres 1 curry restuarant here and to be honest I was expecting it to be a lot worse than it was and it was heaven to crunch into a poppadom again.
Theres a few things I must remember to bring back here with me when I pop back to the UK, a roast dinner just isnt the same without some mint sauce at least we found horseradish.
I have to say I am very partial to ghurkins and I love em in sarnies.
I do agree about Swiss food, it is heavy on cheese and potatoes, pickles and fat!! but it can be nice just very unhealthy! I had my first Raclette at a friends the other night and just thought it was amazing how the Swiss came up with the idea of melting cheese over potatoes and pickles and inventing a machine to do it? all very odd but it was an enjoyable sociable way of eating, as is fondue.
As for eating out, here in Zurich we have had some fantastic meals, infact I can't think of any bad meals really, although we went to the Argentinian Steak place with my parents a few weeks ago and my mum ordered lamb, it came and didn't have any fat on it at all, totally lean, which was a bit suspicious, my mum said it tasted nothing like lamb and was sure it was beef, when we asked the waiter he said no it is Lamb, when we said it tasted like beef and not lamb he said, "ahh that is because it is lamb-beef"
English food well made is very good (but I don't share your love of Yorkshire puddings). Finding it "well made" is the problem and "yes", you are likely to put on weight eating it if you do a sedentary job like I do. What gets me about Basel compared to Munich (where I previously lived) is that the prices in the restaurants are about 3 times higher in Basel while serving smaller portions of much worse food with a much more limited menu. But then any country that puts out Aromat with its salt and pepper must have a national problem with its food. I remember Aromat in England I think from the 60's "On food , on eggs . If you sprinkle me on dishes, I give everything zee flavour".
There is a lot in Switzerland I could complain about but I am not complaining about the salary I get paid nor the rate of tax I have to pay on it nor that I can walk the streets late at night without fear of getting mugged.
I must have missed out on the 'decent' Rösti. I have been taken out by work a couple of times for rösti and it was such an anti-climax. Its just fried potatoes!
And there were so many more interesting things they could have done with the potato...
I might be tempted to have the cheese fondue again, but maybe not more than twice a year. It sits kind of heavy in the stomach. It does not mix well with beer afterwards either
I have too admit though, I didn't manage to finish the first rösti I had. it filled me up quite quickly and I wished I had had something more exciting off the menu.
I would have thought all the chocolate was the most dangerous health hazard here, but may be it is the spud afterall....
I can see where people are coming from when talking about Rosti and fondue, I tend to refer to it as tourist fodder. There is some really great Swiss food though if you know where to get it - the food my wife and her family cook is amazing.
What sort of food does your wife and her family cook? I have been trying to get hold of english swiss cookery books but the two I have found are rubbish, one is a cook book dedicated to rosti and the other I got for xmas is full of quite frankly the foulest looking food I have ever seen, a lot of horse, tripe and veal, not my cup of tea. But I would be really interested to know what is popular other than fondu, raclette and rosti for the average Swiss person
well if you don't like smelly cheese then avoid at all cost, especially from food stalls, but I did experience it for the first time at a friends last week and it was OK, a weird idea but definitely a good social way of eating, good fun. but i think boiled potatoes, melted smelly cheese and pickles is a strange idea of a nutritious meal. Do the swiss not know what fresh veggies are? I asked a Swiss friend once why they don't eat many veg with their traditional meals and their answer was "potatoes are veg?"
its a fair point, in China/Japan potato is counted as veg since their staple food is rice (in most areas).
I picked up a type of cheese that was on offer in the coop yesterday to add to a cheese sauce. It had Appenzel or something on it and looked quite local, but it smelt so strong I have had to evict it from the fridge. Once cooked it was fine, and the taste wasn't too strong either.
It currently lives on the balcony, so maybe the neighbours will complain soon...
Well I agree that potatoes are veg but its well known that they are the least healthy and nutritious of veg, i just thought it a bit odd that maybe they feel that eating so many potatoes is healthy as they are actually a veg, i would't count potatoes in my 5 a day fruit and veg..?
Appenzeller cheese is my favourite, very smelly rind but it is really tasty, it takes a bit of getting used to, but some of the food stalls selling raclette use an extremely smelly raclette cheese that I struggle with, but I do think the smelly cheese thing is something you get used to, I remember buying some cheese in the first few months being here and not being able to eat it as it really did honk.
Raclette cheese is the cheese you see in big blocks and sometiems has flavours in it, to eat raclette you'll need to purchase a raclette grill
may be I'll wait until I become a bit more local before going for the the raclette grill. it looks like the swiss version of a sandwich toaster - something that takes up too much cupboard space but can't be thrown away...just in case...!