Bern - sweets and fondue

Bern - Switzerland



Traipsing through Switzerland, we arrive in Bern on a freezing winter's morning. Fogged in and miserable, we seek solace in the wonderful bakeries down the city's main street.



Beautiful presentations and delicious smells convince us that something had to be done:



A small local doughnut (note spelling) dusted with cinnamon and sugar.



This was, A declared, the best doughnut that she had ever tasted. Being quite a connoisseur of doughnuts and notoriously difficult to please, this is very high praise indeed! The pastry was fluffy and mildly sweet, with the taste of fresh bread. The fluffy inside was so light as to be melting, while the outside almost slightly crisp and nicely caramalised.



Cold and tired, we wander into a small cafe for a pick-me-up. A's cafe latte is stylishly served in a tall glass with the most amazing marshmallow-like foam.



My espresso was rich and dark, with delicious crema.



Almost CHF10 (£7) for a couple of coffees: what else would you expect from Switzerland?



More chocolate-gazing...



Cakes, biscuits and pastries line every surface...

For the feature part of this post:

Restaurant Zur Krone
Gerechtigkeitsgasse 66
CH-3011 Bern





By now, we are cold, hungry and very tired from window shopping, so we wander into a restaurant promising fondue.



Daily specials.



The drinks menu.



We choose a nice bottle of Swiss wine. Not many people outside of Switzerland will have tried their wine, as so much of it is consumed domestically. This was a fine example of light, fruity, and quite a summery wine. Not for winter, you say?




It's because we're having cheese for lunch! Not the cute little fondue forks that in any western country outside of Franco-Europe would scream 'retro'.



Ahh the chewy, crusty, stale bread.



We chose a tomato and basil fondue. Slightly different from the traditional plain cheese, but we thought it'd be an interesting experiment.



A side serving of baby potatoes to dip in the cheese.



Mmmmm warming-toasty-cheesy goodness.


The bread was actually too fresh, in my opinion. It clung to the cheese well without disintergration, but it also lacked the real chew of a good hard-bread. The cheese was extremely flavourful, with strong notes of wine, tomato and herbs. Not too rich, but hearty on such a cold Swiss winter's day, it was exactly what we needed.



The damage: Bottle of wine, some great fondue, and a side serving of potatoes came to CHF76 (approx £50). Not bad for Switzerland, and not bad for the delicious meal.



Back to the window shopping and chocolate oogling.



Truely, this is the land of chocolate.

Geneva - Cafe Paris

Cafe de Paris
rue du Mont-Blanc 26
1201 Genève, Switzerland



Cafe de Paris is famous for one thing. Steak. Like a few of their counterparts in Paris itself, the cafe serves one thing: salad followed by steak frites.



Wine and desserts are advertised, but otherwise there is no menu.



We are promptly served a green salad with light mustard-vinegrette dressing. The acid excites the palate, but the dressing also has a rich umami flavour that I associate with Swiss dressings. I'm not sure what it is, but there is an associate with meat that I cannot fathom. After all, this is a green salad: the antithesis to all that I believe to be good in the world.



Fresh fluffy rolls with crusty exteriors are served, and a mark on the paper table cloth shows where we are in our meal.



The sirloin is served. The steak is referred to as an entrecôte, but that usually connotes a ribeye, and this should rightly be a contr-filet. Lets just call it a sirloin.



Served atop a spirit burner, the butter sauce bubbled merrily but was thankfully not hot enough to ruin the deliciously rare steak atop. A word about the sauce: made famous since the 1930s, this is one of those 'closely guarded secrets' that turn into great marketing. The ingredients are apparently both unknown and a jealously guarded secret. What we can say is that it's incredibly rich with an unmistakable creamy/buttery flavour. The herbs come through strikingly, but not in our ken to guess; and the sauce adds a richness beyond simple fat in the butter or cream: it adds an unctuously heavy meatiness to an otherwise lean piece of steak. Would this sauce work as well with a proper entrecôte?, perhaps it would be too rich.



A more than generous serving of frites arrived, but they unfortunately lacked the crisp exterior one would expect from an establishment that serves only one dish.



The steak was glorious in its rawness: having ordered it rare, it came closer to blue, with a branded exterior that wasn't quite as crisp and caramalised as I would prefer, but made up by the texture of the silken beef. Why can restaurants in the UK not sear a piece of beef like so?

The damage: immaculate service, salad and steak frites for two, and a glass of wine each came to a tad over CHF120 (approximately £80). Extravagent for steak frites (it was just seared beef, after all), but certainly worth experiencing.