Neue Taverne

As a young ambitious chef, a Michelin star is not something you’re typically trying to hide. In fact, once you have one, you want everyone to know about it. You put the customary red plaque on your door; you put a little red macaron on a prominent place on your website; and if you’re particularly unsubtle about it, you even create a new tasting menu that mentions Michelin in its title (see e.g. Forum in Hong Kong). The reward for all this Michelin marketing, so the theory goes, is that you can raise prices and still expect to be fully booked.

Neue Taverne in Zurich, in contrast, seems to do its best to hide its Michelin star. There’s no plaque on the door, no macaron on the website, and the prices are, by Zurich standards, perfectly reasonable, even affordable. Entering the restaurant, the charade continues: tables are close together, service is friendly but casual, and even the tasting menu has been refashioned into a “tavolata” with dishes to share, presumably because for some, the mere phrase “tasting menu” evokes images of white-gloved waiters and hushed formality. In the US, this kind of casual fine-dining restaurant is not uncommon (see, e.g., the excellent Nari or Francis in San Francisco), but for Europe, all of this is highly unusual. Let’s hope, then, that the camouflage doesn’t extend to the food.

Speaking of the food: the menu is small, entirely vegetarian, and meant to be shared. Most dishes can be made vegan, too. I decide to go a-la-carte because with two people, we can try most of the dishes that sound enticing to me.

We start with a Shokupan brioche with Parmesan cream and truffle (CHF 30), apparently a classic of the kitchen. Brioche, parmesan, and truffle are a safe combination and the ingredients are of good quality, though the truffle could be more aromatic. The main issue, however, is that the proportions are off: the bread is sliced so thick that it’s hard to take a full bite and the parmesan cream contributes less creaminess than one would like. The result is pleasant taste-wise, but somewhat dry and chewy. (6/10)

A dish of watermelon, goat cheese, yuzu, and dashi (CHF 18) arrives simultaneously with the truffle brioche. This is more interesting and provides a welcome fresh counterpart to the brioche: the watermelon is sweet, firm, and elevated by the well-seasoned tangy sauce. The goat cheese is an interesting and excellent addition, mild and moist enough to combine nicely with the fruit, but not so soft and creamy as to take away from the freshness of the dish. (7/10)

We continue with another pair of vegetable plates. I ordered the spinach on potato foam on a whim, mostly intrigued by its strangely low price tag (CHF 9). In Zurich, I’ve paid more for a single cauliflower at the farmer’s market, so expectations are low. Surprisingly though, this turns out to be one of the best dishes of the night: a rich and perfectly seasoned potato foam with pleasantly bitter and vegetal pieces of spinach (real, adult, spinach, not the mild baby kind), topped with a slightly sweet and spicy chilli crunch. A deeply comforting dish elevated by the Asian-inspired topping. Unfortunately, a clump of sand hidden in the spinach makes one of the bites gritty rather than silky smooth; an error that must not happen at this level, but let’s call it a fluke and move on. (7+/10, disregarding the sand).

The artichokes with barigoule (though not really “a la barigoule”, since the sauce here is served separately), carrot, beetroot, and herbs (CHF 26) look like a basic pile of root vegetables with sauce, but appearances deceive: the vegetables are of excellent quality and superbly cooked, particularly the artichoke, which has a perfect amount of roasting and acidity. The sauce is surprisingly substantial and binds everything together into a rich, herb-y, slightly sweet, and very satisfying whole. This is at the upper end of vegetable dishes I’ve tried at one-star restaurants—the jig is up, despite all their efforts to appear like a normal, casual restaurant, Neue Taverne serves excellent star-worthy food. (7+/10)

Well, maybe not so fast. The rigatoni with salsa verde, snow peas, and Belper knolle (CHF 32) sounded good on the menu, but while the pasta is well-cooked, the sauce is dry and timid, lacking the freshness and spice I would expect from a salsa verde. The Belper knolle, a Swiss cheese whose popularity in (Swiss) fine dining has always confounded me, adds little. (6/10)

The flatbread with oyster mushrooms, zucchini, and chili mayonnaise (CHF 25, pictured is only half the portion) gets us back on track. The flatbread is an excellent focaccia-style bread that manages to be simultaneously moist, light, and chewy. The mushrooms and zucchini are heavily seasoned and the chili mayo adds a little spice and a lot of creaminess; combined, this is undoubtedly delicious with great depth of flavour, but the seasoning and sauce do overpower the natural flavour of the mushrooms and zucchini. Not a particularly refined dish, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. (7/10)

There are two desserts on the menu; we order both. A skyr cream with berries, granola, herb granita, and lemon oil (CHF 18) is essentially a higher-end version of your typical morning yoghurt with fruit and granola. Thankfully, the herb granita adds another level of flavour atop the breakfast-y foundation, but doesn’t manage to elevate this beyond a tasty but predictable dessert. (6/10)

Peach with vanilla ice cream, sour cream, smoked maple syrup, and almond (CHF 18) follows the same template: fruit with sweet dairy and something crunchy, in this case an almond crumble at the bottom. The result is also similar: tasty, but not particularly exciting, especially because the peach is not of a quality that qualifies it for the role of main protagonist, and the smokiness of the maple syrup doesn’t come through. (6/10)

Neue Taverne is not a place you go to experience the pomp and circumstance often associated with European fine dining; nor is it a place you go to experience culinary wizardry and outlandish flavour combinations. But it is a place you go to enjoy some excellent, well-balanced vegetable cookery based on high-quality ingredients. It’s a kind of restaurant I rarely see in Europe: casual atmosphere with relaxed but high-quality cuisine. I wish there were more like it.