(Zürich, Switzerland)
For our last meal in Switzerland, the posse agreed to meet at Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Zürich’s main train station) and set out in search of mutually agreeable food. Our plan was to head to “Tibits”, a vegetarian restaurant in the Bellevue neighbourhood that I had enjoyed on some previous visits, unless something else really caught our eye along the way.
However, when we arrived at the station, we were quite surprised to see that there was a street food market! And it was only there for this particular weekend, so it was a pretty big deal. The street food market concept really took off in Copenhagen, where a temporary set-up in a vacant industrial space became the “go to” place for affordable food in that expensive city.
As Zürich is even more expensive than Copenhagen, the street food market suddenly seemed like a great idea. With about 80 different vendors offering food from around the world, we would each be able to find something we liked. And so, after some crafty manoeuvres to nab some seating, we each faced one of the biggest dining decisions of our lives!
As we had eaten (more or less) Swiss food for the previous 12 days, I was less inclined to eat something local for my main course. However, it also didn’t seem right to have something I could easily have at home or in another European country that I frequently visit…this eliminated the Dutch food and several others from contention. I was quite tempted to try one of my favourite dishes from Chile (pastel de choclo), but this is readily available in Toronto. I eventually decided to grab some Indonesian food, which is very scarce in Ontario. The peanut sauce was amazing!
For dessert, I decided to go for Kaiserschmarrn, a favourite of one of our other posse members. As he had already moved on to Basel, I figured he would appreciate it if I ate it on his behalf. Kaiserschmarrn is an Austrian specialty named after Emperor Franz Josef and consists of shredded pancake, apple sauce, rum-soaked-raisins, icing sugar, and various other toppings: mine featured almonds but plums (“Zwetschgen“) are quite popular in Switzerland.
And who would have thought that a dish called “cholera” would last into the 21st century? As you can see from the photo above and this explanatory article, people really do want to eat cholera! I didn’t have any, but in retrospect it would have been interesting to try.
It was a lot of fun to eat street food in Zürich. The only real negative was that smoking is still permitted in that part of the train station. For a post-dinner coffee free of second-hand smoke, we adjourned to the Brasserie Federal in the station. This is a very old-fashioned railway restaurant with furnishings that probably date back a century! It was a nice way to relax after the hustle and bustle of the street food market.
Und jetzt bin ich bereit nach Hause gehen!