A Lovely Afternoon in Lucerne – and Swiss Chocolate (gluten free soy free)!

My lunch - veal with mushroom sauce

Ry, Lisa and I spent a wonderful afternoon in Lucerne as a day trip from Zurich.  The covered bridge, Lucerne’s main draw, is absolutely gorgeous!  Just look at it, it’s like something drawn up in a fairy tale.  After leisurely walking around the old town, we sat down to lunch at Pfistern right beside the river.  You couldn’t get much better of a seat for the view and atmosphere!   I was able to order the Chalbsgschnaatzlets <Lozarner Art> – sliced veal in a delicate mushroom cream sauce, served with golden brown roesti.  The staff just had to make me a separate mushroom cream sauce to make it gluten free.  It tasted really good and the staff was incredibly knowledgeable about which menu items were gluten free and what substitutions were required.

Ok onto the best part about Lucerne – the chocolate I stumbled upon…

Read More

Horse in Zurich

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

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.

Read More

Glutenfrei Roesti in the Swiss Alps

A very cheesy farmer's roesti

To me our short time in the Swiss Alps was categorized by fresh air, mountain peaks poking through clouds and roestis.

When Ry, Lisa and I met up with three friends from our Singapore reunion at the Interlaken train station, they quickly whisked us away from the tourist hub that is ‘the adventure capital of the world’.  We wanted a bit more of an authentic vibe, so we drove half an hour to eat lunch in Lauterbrunnen.  At this early stage in our trip, the guys didn’t even know that I was gluten intolerant since the last time I had seen them was in my gluten days.  I hadn’t done any planning on where to eat gluten free in the Swiss Alps since I didn’t know which towns we were going to be in.  But after our amazing meal in Montreux, I was optimistic that I might be able to find something.  As my luck would have it (or simply because of Celiac awareness in Switzerland), the restaurant the guys randomly picked had “glutenfrei” written on the sandwich board outside.   I couldn’t believe it; here I was in Switzerland with the German translation of gluten free identified all over the menu!   We had a great lunch at Hotel Oberland catching up on each other’s lives.  Our entire table ordered different variations of roesti.  I had a delicious farmer’s roesti with bacon and cheese.  This was by far the cheesiest roesti of the trip; there were giant pieces of cheese melted on top of it.  It was such a relief to be able to order something off the menu and not have to walk around to find a restaurant that knew what gluten free was.  What a pleasant surprise and very tasty!

Read More

Cheese Overload in Montreux, Switzerland

Our cheesy spread at Le Museum Restaurant, Swiss classics at its best

“How do Swiss people eat this much cheese?” we asked ourselves, bellies full after eating an incredible dinner of traditional Swiss offerings at Le Museum Restaurant.  Well after posing that question to our local friends the next day, we found out that Swiss people only eat cheese fondue a couple times a winter.  That would explain all of the incredibly fit, gorgeous people.

Our dinner in Montreux, Switzerland was delicious and I’m thankful we got all of the cheesy classics out of the way on our first day in this beautiful country.  After walking around Lake Geneva to explore the cute Chillon Castle, we had worked up quite the appetite.  We met with my friend Lisa at the restaurant and together we decided to share three meals so that we could try a bit of everything, what a good decision!

Read More