I ate at Hilti (Basel) once and I was indeed horrified.
Never again.
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I’ve no idea why that place is so popular. Food is ‘meh’ and expensive to boot.
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Are you talking about tibits? I have made only 3 promises in my life and one of them is to never ever under any circumstances enter that ripoff, tasteless stinkyard ever again.
Probably 'cause is one of those “iconic” places. Food is OK; expensive…well, what is not expensive in Zh.
I may be confusing them, yes, but I recall the meal (a leaving do for an incompetent, vegan, contract stats programmer who I’d be been sharing a cubicle with for three months while they figured out what to do with her) I’m thinking of was not at the location where I later knew Tibits to be, IYSWIM. This must have been around 2001. I see that Hiltl is now only in Zurich so who knows what my brain is mixing up?
Anyway, Tibits. yeah. I cannot improve upon your description.
Edit: After checking on googlemaps, whatever it was called it’s no longer there. Was up two flights of stairs on a small street just off Marktplatz, possibly Sattelplatz.
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Bummer.
Or Italian food cooked for Germans.
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For her, maybe, not for the rest of us. How she’d got the job was anybody’s guess, but she had not the first clue about SAS, nor in fact about programming in general and it seems her Stats experience was based on work in linguistics, where they just count up numbers of words/spellings and the like, so not stats. I tried to mentor her but she really was useless. Oh, and she didn’t believe in using deodorant either.
This is precisely the hipster profile of the tibits target segment. She was right at home there.
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To be fair, can someone really say what the difference is between Hiltl and Tibits (except for the price)?
Must be a local hipster-ish thingy. Hipsters in Zh believe in deodorants. Anyway, it’s funny how people seem to identify the target segment because on the other forum someone identified Hiltl as a hotspot for mom clubs. 
In reality their clientele is diverse. And last but not least not necessarily made up of self-declared vegans or vegetarians.
Joining you in the don’t like cheese club, from viewing the state of the upper shelf, chocolate also losing the popularity stakes.
Tomorrow ‘s weather looks to be mostly sunny and warm - I’d give the Bahnhofstrasse a miss and wander the smaller streets (perhaps take the Polybahn up to the ETH Polyterrasse where you get a coffee and pretend you’re in your 20’s again) then walk back down towards the Kunsthaus and Niederdorf. The spring flowers and flowering shrubs coming into their own now.
That sounds rather apt, and is probably intended, considering they’re a German franchising chain of “pasta/pizza restaurants” (kinda McD copycats). See their .com website.
I also have bad memories about Hiltl. I was in Badi with my kids when the youngest was a baby, and the only option to eat was Hiltl (normally I avoid vegetarian restaurants). After I ate there my baby refused to eat breast milk for the next several hours and was crying from hunger.
Our favourite restaurant in Zurich is Holy Cow (some other cities have it as well). They sell very tasty burgers and they claim that their french fries are the best in Zurich. Also the kids burger menu has very reasonable price. My kids always want to go there when we are in Zurich and not far from Löwenplatz. You can eat there at any time and they are also open on Sunday, unlike many other restaurants in Zurich.
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From Italian self-service restaurants I also like Spiga. I don’t like Vapiano, as you have to answer many questions while the cook is preparing your meal. And as they are foreigners and I am a foreigner and it’s very noisy from boiling and frying, we don’t understand each other well. If you are in Sihlcity you don’t have much other choice for lunch except Vapiano.
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Let’s hope they discovered Aromat then.
On a more serious note, yes they are a chain and their food is a mix of whatever (how do they call it these days…fusion cuisine?) and some of their dishes “hit the spot” more than others.
I recall a friend asking me about about Taco Bell (not in CH) as she was tempted to give it a try…well, I have eaten only enchiladas/burritos there and we were usually hungry when we hit Taco Bell, but if they’re in for a real Mexican cuisine experience that’s not the place.
Yep, true that. It’s a bit like a Starbucks “coffee experience”. 
Also still very popular here…for other reasons than coffee, I guess.
Thankfully Starbucks isn’t nearly as popular here as it was 10 years ago.
Not a huge fan of Spiga either. Pizza and pasta aren’t super complicated food items and the quality of the ingredients you use will make or break them. With these chain restaurants it’s all frozen, delivered from a huge central warehouse ingredients and it reflects in the taste.
The reason is you can be loud and no one will complain. In traditional coffee shop/tea room you’re expected to be silent, murmur to your companion and children should behave as if they were high on sedatives. I just went to city center and passed in front of local Starbucks. 3 moms in the sun with their children running around. This wouldn’t be possible in other coffee shop, someone alone reading a book would complain.
Moms with kids are not the largest segment of their clientele. What I think it sets them apart is the fact that you can occupy a table for as long as you want and nobody would blink an eye. That together with the noise thing…of course. Funnily enough, some people use it as a (co)working space. That’s why it can be difficult at certain hours (and locations) to find a free table.
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