Horse in Zurich

Beautiful night in Zurich

For our first night in Zurich the 6 of us went out for dinner at Eisenhof.  It didn’t look like anything special, but the guys assured us it was not to be missed.  It ended up being Ry’s favourite meal of the trip.  The house specialty is fillet served on a hot stone.  We each ordered either beef or horse fillet (Ry and I got beef).  They served the meat virtually raw on a hot stone at your seat.  We had to cook the meat before eating it by turning it and cutting off pieces and pressing them against the hot stone to cook to our liking.  It was really neat and we had never seen anything like it before.  It was such a delicious, tender piece of beef, I don’t think I have had such a good cut of beef at a restaurant before, let alone at what looked like a tiny pub.  Oddly enough with such an amazing piece of meat it was served with French fries, or in my case a small plain roestii.  Ryan was brave and tried some horsemeat too; he said it was incredible.  But boy was he creeped out when Johannes put a piece of it on his stone – the meat was so raw it was purple.  Personally, I couldn’t bring myself to try the horse.  Don’t get me wrong, I love trying new types of meat when I travel, but horses have been my favourite animal since I was a kid, I just couldn’t do it.

A raw slab of beef served on a hot stone at Eisenhof

Johannes really helped me out with speaking to the waitress and chef in German about cooking glutenfrei for me.  Our waitress had no idea what gluten was but thankfully Johannes talked to someone in the kitchen who assured him that it was just plain meat and that they could cook me roesti instead of the fries and that I should avoid the dipping sauces the beef is served with.  I’m so grateful that I could try that meal!  That’s another benefit of being with locals; they know good non-touristy restaurants and can speak the local languages.

Oh and random fact, the horsemeat was from Canada.  Who knew that horsemeat was a specialty of ours?!