Zeughauskeller

Thursday, September 27, 2007
Dinner with Christine

Christine and I went to Zeughauskeller at the recommendation of one of our Zurich colleagues. She had said it was very traditional Swiss, easy to get to in center of town, a bit touristy, but good food and she eats there sometimes. Good enough. The restaurant is a quick walk from Paradeplatz, which is a big tram station on Bahnhofstrasse, the shopping street with Fifth Ave stores.

(Another Paradeplatz recommendation is Sprungli on the corner of Paradeplatz and Bahnhofstrasse across from Credit Suisse – phenomenal chocolate shop and it also has a café that looked great)

Zeughauskeller is on the Sprungli side of the plaza there across Bahnhofstrasse. At 8:30pm, the place was packed and we waited a little, but there seemed to be one rush of diners because we were the last ones to have to wait in line.

Zeughauskeller is one cavernous dining room with long wooden tables and random military décor on the walls. I mean a Gattling gun over the door and armor and rifles on the wall. Kind of bizarre. No small table so we shared one with a couple from France.

Started the drinks with Natertrub, an unfiltered grainy draught beer. Next was Schneider Aventinus, which was on the menu as "Bavaria’s best dark wheat beer." I didn't read the fine print on the 8.0 Vol. % and 5.0 dl (half a liter...) but it was definitely my favorite beer of the night. (Check out their website for the beer list, good stuff).

On the food end, I started with a tomato and onion salad with French dressing, really firm fresh tomatoes. Christine had one of their seasonal specials, a butternut squash soup, which was phenomenal and rich. For dinner, I had the Kalbsgeschnetzeltes nach Zürcher Art (yes, I copied and pasted). It is "panfried sliced veal and mushrooms in a delicious creamy white-wine sauce" and came with the Swiss-style hash browns, Rosti. Fantastic cream sauce, and the hash browns were perfect.

I think it ended up being about 45-50 CHF (Swiss francs) per person.

Bahnhofstrasse 28a (near Paradeplatz), 8001 Zürich, Switzerland
0041 044 211 26 90