In Defense of Geneva's Restaurants

Without eating at most of them, because they're very expensive

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Now onto the silliness.

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“I've never eaten well in Geneva,” wrote esteemed Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsma in his online food chat.

Never? Never is a very long time…. or a long lack of time? I get confused.

I imagine that could be true for someone who spends a lot of time here in the Protestant Rome but doesn't have any money. Even a trip to McDonald’s here is going to break $20. The first time I went to Switzerland was on a day trip to Basel from Freiburg, Germany in 1996. I recall thinking of Basel as “the city where I can’t afford to have lunch.” So I waited until I returned to Germany to eat yet another spectacular döner kebab. I later learned that it wasn’t a city in which I couldn’t afford lunch, but an entire country.

But presumably, Sietsma has a bigger budget than a 19-year-old American college student had in the waning days of the twentieth century. And if not, he should ask for a raise. He’s very good.

My knowledge of Geneva’s restaurants, even after two years here, remains extremely limited because of the prices. I have been to one Mexican restaurant, one Iranian restaurant, one Georgian restaurant, one Indian restaurant, two Lebanese restaurants, and a few French, Swiss, and Italian places. I was supposed to go to another Iranian restaurant for my anniversary last weekend, but my son got sick, so I didn’t. I eat most of my restaurant meals across the border in France, which is at least marginally cheaper.

At lunch one can do okay ordering the plat du jour, but when going out to dinner it is nearly impossible to get out of any restaurant without dropping at least $75 or so per person and its very difficult to stay below $100. We saw one Mexican place that had $24 guacamole. That’s the kind of place this is. Compound that with the fact that going to an expensive restaurant with two little kids is not the luxurious experience I wish it to be, and dining out is just not worth it most of the time. I could pay for babysitting and I have, but in a canton with a minimum wage pushing $25 an hour, it gets expensive fast.

Rosti. Can’t screw it up.

Still, in a city with this much money (note: a lot), it’s really hard for me to imagine that there isn’t plenty of very good rich people food around. You know, filet mignon in decadent sauces, foie gras, caviar, the poor. On the other hand, not everything hers is deluxe. Somehow, Cointrin, the local international airport in one of the world’s richest cities has a Newark in 1983 vibe. Perhaps what Sietsma is really saying is that he has never eaten anything terribly interesting here? That I might believe.

Classic Suisse Romande cuisine is tasty. How could it not be? It’s made almost entirely of cheese, meat, potatoes, butter, and wine. Fondue may seldom be brilliant, but it is almost always at least good. It’s melted cheese for heaven’s sake. The same goes for raclette, which is also melted cheese, but different melted cheese. Rösti, though more Swiss German, is uniformly delicious too, as fried potatoes must be. There’s also very good, albeit overpriced, Italian food all over the place.

Raclette, properly done, is delicious.

But I get how Swiss cuisine could fail to tickle the palate of an adventurous eater. I never went to Stable, the well-regarded Swiss restaurant not far from my house in Northeast DC because it seemed boring. By whom was Stable well-regarded? Why Tom Sietsma! Sietsma rated it as “good” in 2017. So if he ate well there but never in Geneva, does that mean that he thinks DC’s Swiss food scene is better than Geneva’s?

Beautiful Swiss beef.

I have identified two and only two places here that I go repeatedly, mostly because of their excellent price to quality ratio. Okay, not excellent; it’s still Geneva, their tolerable price to quality ratio.

No even sure what that is but it looks great!

The first is Bains des Pâquis, which the reader whose question prompted Siestsma’s response mentioned. Bain des Pâquis is a basically a dock sticking out into the lake that offers swimming, hamams, and some of the best and most reasonably priced food in town. Where else can you get a rubdown and fondue? Well, probably a bunch of places in the red light district, though that’s also in the Paquis neighborhood, so it all fits together.

One can get fondue at Bain des Pâquis, though I would only do so in the cool months, as fondue may be the worst summer food of all time. The other choice is one of the two to three plats du jour, which, in a most unSwiss way, they offer in the evening as well as at lunch for the low, low price of CHF15. It is my number one eating recommendation for anyone whipping through Geneva for a day.

The second is Crêperie de Bourg-de-Four in the Old Town. I am sure the Old Town has some good restaurants, but it has a lot of mediocre, expensive tourist places. The Crêperie by contrast, offers superb, crispy crepes, both classic and innovative at non-usurious prices. Somehow, they have crispy cheese on the outside of the crepes as well as the inside.

I guess there’s a third place. You can come to my house. As mentioned before, I’ll have anyone who isn’t a war criminal to dinner, and I make a nice Coq au vin.