Swiss Culinary Tour

By Angela Wibking

The quickest way to a country’s heart may not be through its stomach but it’s not a bad place to start. On a culinary tour of French-speaking western Switzerland, I learned as much about the history and culture of the region while touring the local produce markets and wineries as I did poking through the museums and gawking at the major sights. Our small group of food and wine enthusiasts also dined in Michelin-starred French restaurants, observed the intricacies of cheese making in an Alpine hut and enjoyed traditional Swiss specialties like fondue and the melted cheese-and-potato meal called raclette at casual local eateries. While our itinerary was arranged especially for our particular group through regional tourism offices, most of the food-related tours and all of the restaurants and markets are open to individuals as well.

Geneva

We started our weeklong culinary tour of western Switzerland in Geneva, a beautiful and surprisingly small (population about 180,000) city on the shores of Lake Geneva. Located just a few miles from the French border, the city is the birthplace of the Red Cross and home to the European headquarters of the United Nations. It’s also home to some outstanding French restaurants. One of these is Le Cigalon, located so close to the Swiss-French border that our group actually strolled over into France before dinner. Back on Le Cigalon’s lovely patio, where the mid-70 degree August temperatures invited outdoor dining, we began our meal with a mild gazpacho with lobster medallions and then progressed to shrimp in a sweet curry sauce with apple ravioli. Our group’s entrée was a roasted fillet of sea bass and the finale was a feather-light white chocolate bavarian. For those who consider such things when choosing a restaurant, Le Cigalon was awarded its first Michelin star a few years ago.

Earlier that day we enjoyed a luxurious lunch on the terrace of Le Chat-Botté, another Geneva restaurant sporting a coveted Michelin star. Located in the Hotel Beau Rivage on the city’s Right Bank, the restaurant also boasts a wonderful view of the lake. Our lunch included duck carpaccio with black olives and rocket salad, sliced sea bass cooked with wine, shallots and herbs and served with mousseline potatoes and lamb with spring vegetables. Dessert was a crispy blancmange with raspberry and strawberry sherbert, followed by coffee and trays of miniature chocolate and fruit pastries. Another day we lunched at Parc des Eaux-Vives, a restaurant awarded "4 forks" by the Michelin Guide. Our meal here included an appetizer of rockfish with a sweet pepper coulis, a young rabbit compote with plum sauce, an extensive cheese board and a delectable pineapple tart with rum granité.

En route one morning to a wine tasting outside of Geneva, our group stopped in Carouge, a charming Greenwich Village-like section of the city where there is a produce market every Wednesday and Saturday morning. Set under a natural canopy of trees on a square bounded on one end by a small church, the market featured booths filled with bright sunflowers and other blooms and food stalls overflowing with cartons of fat raspberries and blackberries arranged together in containers in a checkerboard pattern, trays of mushrooms, bowls of olives, jars of homemade jams and bottles of orange-flavored liqueur.

The winery we toured was that of Charles Novelle and his son Jean-Michel (who was named Swiss wine grower of the year in 1994 by the Gault-Millau guide). Seated around a large wooden table at the winery, our group was joined by Swiss wine writer Catherine Michel for a tasting of white, red and dessert wines from the Novelle cellars. Afterwards we took a tour of the sunny vineyards with the Novelles as our guides. We enjoyed Swiss wines with all our meals throughout our stay and found many of them to be excellent. Savor them while you’re here, however. The country’s yield is small and only 1 or 2 percent of Swiss wine is exported.

Lausanne

After dining our way through Geneva, we traveled east by car to Lausanne, another exquisite small city on the shores of Lake Geneva (or Lac Léman, as it is called by the Swiss here). Famous for its Gothic cathedral and Olympic Museum, the city is also an ideal home base for exploring the nearby vineyards, scenic mountain villages and other lakeside towns like Vevey and Montreux. A highlight of our stay here was a visit to the little village of Chateau d’Oex (pronounced "day") one morning to watch Philippe Rossier and his wife Gladys produce the Gruyere-style cheese known as L’Etivaz that is a specialty of the region.

Though much of Switzerland’s cheese is mass-produced now in modern dairies, some is still made the old-fashioned way by families like the Rossiers, who live in the village during the winter months and spend their summer days at a two-room Alpine hut on a mountain creating delicious wheels of cheese. The key to this firm, pungent and slightly nutty-tasting cheese (aside from the rich milk produced by the Rossiers’ own cows) is the wood fire that heats the milk in a huge kettle in one room of the hut. We watched as Philippe and Gladys tended the fire and the contents of the kettle: mixing rennet with the whey to curdle the milk, straining the curd through a cloth and pouring it into a hoop form over two-feet in diameter, and pressing the molded cheese to force out the rest of the whey. Then Philippe hoisted the huge wheel of cheese into the cellar where it rests under pressure until the next morning when it is transported to the village co-operative cellar shared by 77 other local cheese makers. The Rossiers’ cheese ages in that cellar as much as three years before being sold.

You’re a more dedicated foodie than me, however, if your nose can withstand the rigors of touring the village cheese cellar. I tried twice and couldn’t make it more than a few feet into the cellar before the smell sent me reeling for the fresh air. One of the great mysteries of cheese is how something that tastes so heavenly in its mellow old age can smell so hellish in its childhood. Adjacent to the cellar, however, one can visit the gift shop and purchase the heavenly version of L’Etivaz cheese in vacuum-sealed packages to take home and also see a short film on the process our group saw carried out live on the Rossiers’ farm.

No Swiss cheese tour would be complete, of course, without a meal of cheese fondue and we had ours at Serpenteys, a local hangout just outside the village. Another great local eatery we tried was La Passade, located in the small lakeside village of Perroy, about 12 miles west of Lausanne. Lunch here is the perfect way to dine like (and with) the locals on butter-fried lake fish, steak with mushrooms, blood sausages, local cheeses and homemade vanilla ice cream with raisin sauce.

The next morning we strolled through the waterfront produce market held every Monday in Vevey, about 12 miles east of Lausanne, and then headed for Montreux, the city famed for its jazz festival held every July and the 12^th century castle of Chillon, made immortal by Byron’s poem The Prisoner of Chillon. Our group’s destination here, however, was Confiserie Zurcher, a lovely little chocolate shop/café that is a great place for a sweet treat while enjoying a view of the lake. Founded by Arnold Zurcher in 1879, it’s still managed by fourth generation family members. Everything for sale, including the luscious Zurcher truffles, is handmade in the upstairs kitchen, which our group toured and where we talked with chocolate master Max Muller, who has worked for Zurcher for most of his career. The shop is well worth a visit for some special chocolate souvenirs to take home, though the kitchens aren’t normally open to the public. Individuals and groups can, however, tour the Nestlé Food Museum in Vevey or tour the Nestlé chocolate factory in Broc for a taste of Swiss chocolate making on a grand scale.

For information on visiting Switzerland, go to www.switzerlandtourism.com or call the Swiss tourism office in Chicago at 312-630-5840 or the New York office at 212-757-5944. For more information on Geneva, visit www.geneve-tourisme.com