Right beyond one corner of the St. Peter Hofstadt, the beautifully-proportioned square in front of the St. Peter church, lies another Zurich landmark restaurant, Peter Brunner’s Kasier’s Reblaube. The name of the restaurant is the Kaiser family’s grape arbor and Kaiser refers to the name of a previous owner of the restaurant, not the German king. Really two restaurants in one, Kaiser’s Reblaube is the larger ground-floor restaurant that serves typical Zurich specialties. One flight up is the Goethe Stuebli (Little Goethe Parlor) a small dinig room that seats about 30 diners at a time. Here Brunner serves traditional Swiss food with a modern twist. A Swiss friend who joined me at the Goethe Stuebli for dinner remarked that it was like his grandmother’s cooking but prepared by a brilliant chef – and that’s exactly what it is.
In a recent interview, Brunner told me that one of the restaurants he most admires in New York’s Union Square Café. He is attracted by Union Square’s insistence on fresh local produce and the use of preparations that enhance but don’t mask the essential flavor of food.
The mid-winter meal I had started with three little post of spreads to play with while waiting for the first course – they were made from duck liver, black olives and celery root respectively. The first course was a parsnip soup with oatmeal and a garnish of shredded salty-sweet cured ham from Willsau near Lucerne. Next, a ragout of diced calf’s foot with Jerusalem artichokes and black truffles – I almost swooned this was so good. The main course was a rack of baby lamb with polenta and a herb salad that included dill, tarragon, celery leaves and mache, called nuessli in Swiss German. Dessert was a slice of barely cooked beet, providing an earthy counterpoint to a compote of preserved sour cherries, a sour cream ice cream and scoop of a quite bitter chocolate mousse, perfectly echoing the earthiness of the beet. I think I’ll have to go back to see what Brunner is concoting in each season. I love this type of approach to food -- it stretches the boundaries and comes up with a surprising touch that makes perfect flavor sense in each dish, without making them bizarre for the sake of bizarre.
Kaiser’s Reblaube/Goethe Stuebli
Glockengasse 7
CH-8001 Zurich
Telephone from the US: 011 411 221 2120
Fax from the US: 011 411 221 2155
Email: rest.reblaube@bluewin.ch