Zurich - Zurich Eats!

Stall at the Street Food Festival

Swimming and food seem to be the sole two topics of my blogs! No prizes for guessing the topic of this particular entry.

I had Geraldine over to visit for a weekend in September, so I investigated what would be on while she was across. It turned out to be the month of Zurich Eats, so we pretty much joined in.

There was a Street Food Festival along the lake. For some reason, I’d kind of forgotten to factor in that it would be very busy if we went at 6pm, but I guess at least we saw it at its peak.

There were loads of stalls selling hot snacks from all over the world – I can’t quite remember what they all were now, but I think there was Nepalese, Tibetan, Korean; if not those, then it felt as if almost everywhere was represented including many countries that you don’t usually see (however, the UK was not represented!).

The choice was a bit baffling and we ended up sitting by the lake with a glass of wine while we tried (and failed) to make up our minds as to what we would eat. The boat just in front of us was the one I’d hired for my 50th birthday! In the end, we just started walking round again and stopped at the first one that took our fancy (it all looked good, but nothing was a “must have”).

There were loads of people, so it was a slow process walking along to see what there was and then also a bit complicated to locate where a queue began and ended and which people were just onlookers. But I’m not complaining! People were not pushy and for such a large attendance, it was pretty civilised. It was fascinating to see all the different types of food.

The prices were not expensive (by Zurich standards), which indicated to us that the idea was probably to buy things from one or two stalls rather than get a full meal from one. However, we ended up just buying something from one of the stalls and it ended up being more filling than it looked. I think it might have been Taiwanese dumplings. The rain was probably also a factor in us cutting down our food intake.

Another part of Zurich Eats was a tomato festival (yes, a tomato festival!). We went to that on the following day after stuffing ourselves at the Hiltl where we had had brunch.

Several people had told me that the Hiltl brunch was very good and indeed it was. For a fixed price of 57 CHF, we got a prosecco, two hot drinks, plus the full buffet including breads, cereals, fresh juices, fried and scrambled eggs, as well as the usual lunch / dinner buffet that they always have, which has an overwhelming choice. I can’t even begin – there are things like onion rings and pakoras, then there’s an Indian curries section, a Thai curries section, then just general salads, then other vegetarian dishes (Roesti, mushroom sauce, spaghetti, other pasta dishes), and then a whole section of desserts.

Anyway, after brunch, we walked up to the Tomato Festival by Buerkliplatz near the lake. Unfortunately, we were both too stuffed to be able to eat anything else, although tomatoes aren’t my favourite food, so I wasn’t really so tempted anyway.

We wandered into a prize giving ceremony, but we weren’t sure what it was for and only later discovered that it was for the photography competition. The photographs were all printed on the outside of the tent and ranged from professionally-taken arty photographs, to colourful displays of tomatoes, to photographs of tomatoes in funny shapes, and just generally comedic photos with tomatoes. I wasn’t sure what the judges were looking for based on this large range of topics or if there were different categories for people to enter. It was a fun display, though.

There were also many stalls set up from people selling different breeds (?) of tomatoes and it was, as far as I could tell, a celebration of rare tomatoes. Each stall had tiny bits of tomatoes set out for you to try, so you could wander round and taste each of them in turn. The colours ranged from almost white to almost black and some were multi-coloured. One was called a pineapple tomato and I was a bit curious about that but never got to taste it.

In addition to tomatoes, there were also other stalls of handcrafted items and home-baked or home-grown food, as well as various types of grappa. Grappa / schnapps seems much more common in Switzerland and Germany than in the UK.

Anyway, it made for an interesting afternoon. Next weekend, the food festival continues in my work building on Saturday, so I think it’s following me around and not me it. I will obviously starve once October comes.