Food and Drinks in Switzerland - Part 1

Food is always a big part of travelling for me.

The Husband and I like to seek out good food whenever we travel.

My expectations of Swiss food wasn't particularly high (sorry to my Swiss friends for saying this), so I didn't really plan to visit any particular restaurants during this trip to Switzerland.

Hence, it was a quite a pleasant surprise whenever we managed to have some really good food.

One particular restaurant we visited during the trip stood out. The  restaurant's name is Echo and it is located at the Zurich Marriott Hotel  (Neumuehlequai 42). It was the first meal The Husband and I had together in Zurich and so, we chose a restaurant that specialises in Swiss food to kick off our vacation.

The bread that came with herb butter and sun-dried tomato paste was really good. I could have easily wolfed down the entire loaf if I had a better appetite that day. The Husband enjoyed his order of veal in cream sauce with rosti. Since I had my share of Swiss food during the training session the week before, I opted for a vegetarian pasta which was also pretty good, although not spectacular. The "trio dessert" came with 3 parts - a very interesting Rivella sorbet, a creme brulee and a fried chocolate dessert which was so good I wanted more!

In general, I thought the food at a lot of the Italian restaurants were good, even though we were visiting the "German part" of Switzerland. There was a random restaurant in Lucerne where we had our dinner - and the salmon linguine was so good we talked about it for the rest of the trip.

This salmon linguine was so simple, yet sooo delicious!

I also liked this fettuccine with tuna and olives. 

I thought there were too much tuna and too many olives though..

I also liked all the wood fired pizzas we had during this trip. I don't think I've ate so much pizza in a week before.

This calzone we had was pretty good - with spinach, mushrooms and cheese inside. 

Look at the size of this thing though!

Most of the salads that we had were also fresh and good. Many of the salads we had came with fresh flowers as decoration, which I really liked.

A pretty mixed vegetable salad with a cheery flower on top

One of my favourite salads during this trip - 

paper-thin tomato slices with mozzarella cheese, topped with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Most of the meals we had were alright - they didn't blow us away but there wasn't too much to complain about. Eating out is generally expensive in Switzerland. A normal meal without wine usually comes up to about at least 50 CHF for two. For fancier restaurants or 3 course meals with wine, the bill can easily come up to about 150 CHF for two.

I don't mind the cost of food in Switzerland as much as I mind the cost of drinks in restaurants... but I'd leave that to my next post.