dining out with spawn - part three
Final post (for now) about dining out as a family here in Geneva. This post is all about the non-Asian restaurants that we have tried and enjoyed.
Inglewood (burgers)
This is possibly one of my favourite places to eat at in Geneva - I love its funky decor, fun and friendly vibe, and the food, of course. All the ingredients are sourced locally and the burgers are cooked to order and accompanied by great fries and a green salad. Burgers are something of a comfort food for me especially when I have a craving for red meat. The portions are generous and the food is fresh. Too bad they don't open on Sundays! It gets crowded very quickly, so we try to go early to grab a table. Incidentally, the kids don't really eat burgers, but they do eat fries, and I figure that a meal consisting solely of fries and ketchup won't hurt them once in a while. Inglewood also has a branch in Lausanne.
Photo from Inglewood's website
Luigia (Italian)
This place is within walking distance from our home, and is one of our standbys when we make an impromptu decision to eat out and are too lazy or tired to drive. It helps that it opens early (6.30pm) and on Sundays as well. The children like it because there is a small play corner inside the restaurant, although it isn't really so much a play corner as it is a foosball table corner, where all the kids gather and play matches with each other while chattering in a mixture of English and French. The Bun and Bao are still too young to properly play with the foosball table, and when the older kids come they are usually relegated to one corner to watch. If the restaurant is quiet, they get a chance to play, even if they're too short and uncoordinated to play the game properly. Anyway, the pizza here is much better than the pasta. My usual order here is the (surprise!) mini hamburger patties, served without any bread buns. Instead they serve them with hand-cut, homemade potato chips, which are awesome. The burger patties are so tender that The Bun will actually eat them, and of course the kids love chips.
Playing foosball at Luigia
Chez Nina (Italian)
A stone's throw away from where we live, this is my preferred Italian restaurant. The pasta here is made fresh in-house and is excellent - I would recommend the crab ravioli with prawn sauce or the pasta in prawn and vodka sauce. I have not tried the pizza yet but friends tell me that it is good. Service, especially from Nina herself, is warm and friendly and she is always giving sweets to the children.
Da Paolo (Italian)
A very popular Italian restaurant on the other side of the lake, we ate there last weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I had an excellent spaghetti vongole which had the kids demanding to share; they split a pizza with their father which was apparently quite good too, and we washed it all down with a nice demi bottle of rosé. Quick and friendly service. One of those restaurants which I'm keen to revisit so that I can try out the other things on their menu.
Spaghetti vongole at Da Paolo.
Eric Emery (cafe-boulangerie)
This is probably the best cafe in our neighbourhood, and trust me, that's saying a lot. One of my gripes since moving here is reading about Singaporeans complaining that the cafe culture in Singapore is a poseur culture, every place has the same hipster vibe, etc etc. Take it from me - you have nothing to complain about. Be thankful you even have cafes (or kopitiams). This is the city where you pay about CHF3.40 (about S$4.80) for an average latte from a supermarket-chain cafe. Anyway, now that I've gotten off my soapbox, Eric Emery is a gemstone in Geneva's cafe culture. They make their own breads and pastries, and the coffee is good. It is consistently crowded even on weekday afternoons, and especially so on Sunday mornings, one of the rare places where we can have breakfast out. (Strangely enough, they are closed on Saturdays.)
Bao demolishing a chocolate croissant while I try to look cool and nonchalant.
Cafe du Soleil (Swiss)
J and I like to bring visiting friends here if they want to try Swiss food because it is near our place, has nonstop dining (a rarity in this city) and offers a variety of typical Swiss-Romande dishes as well as seasonal ones. They are a highly-regarded restaurant and the building that they occupy is apparently 400 years old - lots of history in those walls. The fondue here is excellent, especially on a chilly night, and I can remember a very young Bao eating lots and lots of bread covered in gooey cheese. I also like their steak, which is done in a typical French style and very delicious. It gets very crowded as the night goes on, even on weeknights, so reservations are essential. Service is more brisk than warm.
Steak at Cafe du Soleil
Restaurant du Lac (Swiss-French)
An elegant, yet relaxed restaurant in the lakeside suburb of Versoix. Also another place where I would bring visiting friends, because they do the classic Genevois dish - perch fillets with fries - so well. Perch is the main fish that is caught in Lake Geneva and their small fillets are often fried and then served with a sauce meunière, or with a creamy white wine sauce. Traditionally they are served in two portions - one half kept in a warmer until you finish your first serving - so that your everything stays warm as you work your way through the dish. Perch is a small fish but the portions that they are served in are quite large and the meal, accompanied with crisp fries, can be quite heavy. I have also tried the beef fillet here which was indulgently sinful because they topped it with duck foie. Incredibly bad for your heart, but so, so amazingly tasty. Service was friendly and surprisingly accommodating towards young children, for a posh place.
Delicious heart attack on a plate.
Château de Penthes (modern European)
With a seasonal, imaginative menu, Château de Penthes is a popular restaurant, especially with UN crowd since it is just down the road from the Palais des Nations. I like the surroundings - a small château atop a little hill surrounded by woodland - which make it seem like an oasis in the middle of the city. They also offer tea and coffee service in the terrace, which is excellent if you have kids because there's plenty of space for them to run around in without getting in anyone's way. When you're done with your meal, you can pop into the two small museums across the courtyard, or take a walk down the hills to the Jardin Botaniques.
Cafe de la Tour (Swiss-French)
Special mention goes out to this tiny little restaurant set on the edge of the popular woodland park, Bois-de-la-Bâtie. We would never have discovered it without trying the hike towards the railway bridge to see La Jonction, so named because it is the actual junction of where the two rivers, Rhône and Arve, meet. The Arve is a faster-flowing river and therefore carries more silt, which accounts for its milky green colour. The Rhône is a darker green. The junction where they meet is visually captivating because the contrast in the two rivers' colours is so distinct.
Non-food picture for once - La Jonction.
Anyway, the little restaurant nesting at the top of the river's edge is very unassuming from the outside, but we decided to give it a try since it was nearly noon and we had no other ideas for places to eat in the neighbourhood. It turned out to be a lovely and cosy restaurant, the sort where the waitress comes and recites the specials of the day to you with the confident assumption that no one in their right mind would be eating anything else. She was shadowed by a shaggy dog who must cross the floor hundreds of times a day because throughout our entire meal we never saw him sit or lie down. Instead he would nosy around beneath our table, cleverly working out that children = dropped bits of food. I say this restaurant gets special mention because they were so child-friendly. There was a wine crate in a corner piled high with books, colouring pencils, and metal tins of little plastic trinkets and toys which kept the kids seated and occupied throughout the meal. Also, they served the kids' meal first, around the same time as our entrées arrived, so that the children could eat first and not whine so much. The kids shared a menu enfants (kids' menu) and the food was divided into two plates directly in the kitchen. And although we only ordered one kid's meal to share, the restaurant served them two small ice-cream sundaes instead of just one, and without us asking for it. That was a nice touch. Their food was pretty good, too - J and I both had the asparagus ravioli which was fresh and obviously hand-made. Definitely worth a revisit.
______________
Obviously, this is a poor survey of Geneva's culinary offerings. It is not New York or London, but it does have a range of notable restaurants for a city of its size, especially if you drive and are willing to go a short distance to the smaller villages surrounding the southern end of the lake. For example, when my friend D visited last year we took her to an auberge out in the middle of nowhere near Jussy. We were surrounded by nothing except farmland and the food was memorably good, and recorded here in more detail.
Now that the weather is warming up, I'm looking forward to trying out more places, including one of those (in)famous farm brunches that everyone always mentions on Facebook. The typical farmhouse buffet brunch is something like CHF42 (S$59) per person for a variety of cold, continental offerings and some juices. Seriously, that's it. I mean, I know everything is made in-house and the jams are excellent etc, but CHF42 is really expensive. It makes me very curious so I guess one day I'll drag J and the kids one hour down the lake to try it. Luckily kids are charged according to every year of their age! I don't think I could stomach paying even CHF20 for a couple of croissants and some juice for the kids.
I still want to see if I can find a decent Indian restaurant here, and there's also an Afghan restaurant near The Bun's school that looks promising. It has also been a year since I last ate perch so maybe it's time to pop back into one of those lakeside restaurants, even if we aren't having any visitors anytime in the near future. (Boo!)
Inglewood (burgers)
This is possibly one of my favourite places to eat at in Geneva - I love its funky decor, fun and friendly vibe, and the food, of course. All the ingredients are sourced locally and the burgers are cooked to order and accompanied by great fries and a green salad. Burgers are something of a comfort food for me especially when I have a craving for red meat. The portions are generous and the food is fresh. Too bad they don't open on Sundays! It gets crowded very quickly, so we try to go early to grab a table. Incidentally, the kids don't really eat burgers, but they do eat fries, and I figure that a meal consisting solely of fries and ketchup won't hurt them once in a while. Inglewood also has a branch in Lausanne.
Photo from Inglewood's website
Luigia (Italian)
This place is within walking distance from our home, and is one of our standbys when we make an impromptu decision to eat out and are too lazy or tired to drive. It helps that it opens early (6.30pm) and on Sundays as well. The children like it because there is a small play corner inside the restaurant, although it isn't really so much a play corner as it is a foosball table corner, where all the kids gather and play matches with each other while chattering in a mixture of English and French. The Bun and Bao are still too young to properly play with the foosball table, and when the older kids come they are usually relegated to one corner to watch. If the restaurant is quiet, they get a chance to play, even if they're too short and uncoordinated to play the game properly. Anyway, the pizza here is much better than the pasta. My usual order here is the (surprise!) mini hamburger patties, served without any bread buns. Instead they serve them with hand-cut, homemade potato chips, which are awesome. The burger patties are so tender that The Bun will actually eat them, and of course the kids love chips.
Playing foosball at Luigia
Chez Nina (Italian)
A stone's throw away from where we live, this is my preferred Italian restaurant. The pasta here is made fresh in-house and is excellent - I would recommend the crab ravioli with prawn sauce or the pasta in prawn and vodka sauce. I have not tried the pizza yet but friends tell me that it is good. Service, especially from Nina herself, is warm and friendly and she is always giving sweets to the children.
Da Paolo (Italian)
A very popular Italian restaurant on the other side of the lake, we ate there last weekend and enjoyed it a lot. I had an excellent spaghetti vongole which had the kids demanding to share; they split a pizza with their father which was apparently quite good too, and we washed it all down with a nice demi bottle of rosé. Quick and friendly service. One of those restaurants which I'm keen to revisit so that I can try out the other things on their menu.
Spaghetti vongole at Da Paolo.
Eric Emery (cafe-boulangerie)
This is probably the best cafe in our neighbourhood, and trust me, that's saying a lot. One of my gripes since moving here is reading about Singaporeans complaining that the cafe culture in Singapore is a poseur culture, every place has the same hipster vibe, etc etc. Take it from me - you have nothing to complain about. Be thankful you even have cafes (or kopitiams). This is the city where you pay about CHF3.40 (about S$4.80) for an average latte from a supermarket-chain cafe. Anyway, now that I've gotten off my soapbox, Eric Emery is a gemstone in Geneva's cafe culture. They make their own breads and pastries, and the coffee is good. It is consistently crowded even on weekday afternoons, and especially so on Sunday mornings, one of the rare places where we can have breakfast out. (Strangely enough, they are closed on Saturdays.)
Bao demolishing a chocolate croissant while I try to look cool and nonchalant.
Cafe du Soleil (Swiss)
J and I like to bring visiting friends here if they want to try Swiss food because it is near our place, has nonstop dining (a rarity in this city) and offers a variety of typical Swiss-Romande dishes as well as seasonal ones. They are a highly-regarded restaurant and the building that they occupy is apparently 400 years old - lots of history in those walls. The fondue here is excellent, especially on a chilly night, and I can remember a very young Bao eating lots and lots of bread covered in gooey cheese. I also like their steak, which is done in a typical French style and very delicious. It gets very crowded as the night goes on, even on weeknights, so reservations are essential. Service is more brisk than warm.
Steak at Cafe du Soleil
Restaurant du Lac (Swiss-French)
An elegant, yet relaxed restaurant in the lakeside suburb of Versoix. Also another place where I would bring visiting friends, because they do the classic Genevois dish - perch fillets with fries - so well. Perch is the main fish that is caught in Lake Geneva and their small fillets are often fried and then served with a sauce meunière, or with a creamy white wine sauce. Traditionally they are served in two portions - one half kept in a warmer until you finish your first serving - so that your everything stays warm as you work your way through the dish. Perch is a small fish but the portions that they are served in are quite large and the meal, accompanied with crisp fries, can be quite heavy. I have also tried the beef fillet here which was indulgently sinful because they topped it with duck foie. Incredibly bad for your heart, but so, so amazingly tasty. Service was friendly and surprisingly accommodating towards young children, for a posh place.
Delicious heart attack on a plate.
Château de Penthes (modern European)
With a seasonal, imaginative menu, Château de Penthes is a popular restaurant, especially with UN crowd since it is just down the road from the Palais des Nations. I like the surroundings - a small château atop a little hill surrounded by woodland - which make it seem like an oasis in the middle of the city. They also offer tea and coffee service in the terrace, which is excellent if you have kids because there's plenty of space for them to run around in without getting in anyone's way. When you're done with your meal, you can pop into the two small museums across the courtyard, or take a walk down the hills to the Jardin Botaniques.
Cafe de la Tour (Swiss-French)
Special mention goes out to this tiny little restaurant set on the edge of the popular woodland park, Bois-de-la-Bâtie. We would never have discovered it without trying the hike towards the railway bridge to see La Jonction, so named because it is the actual junction of where the two rivers, Rhône and Arve, meet. The Arve is a faster-flowing river and therefore carries more silt, which accounts for its milky green colour. The Rhône is a darker green. The junction where they meet is visually captivating because the contrast in the two rivers' colours is so distinct.
Non-food picture for once - La Jonction.
Anyway, the little restaurant nesting at the top of the river's edge is very unassuming from the outside, but we decided to give it a try since it was nearly noon and we had no other ideas for places to eat in the neighbourhood. It turned out to be a lovely and cosy restaurant, the sort where the waitress comes and recites the specials of the day to you with the confident assumption that no one in their right mind would be eating anything else. She was shadowed by a shaggy dog who must cross the floor hundreds of times a day because throughout our entire meal we never saw him sit or lie down. Instead he would nosy around beneath our table, cleverly working out that children = dropped bits of food. I say this restaurant gets special mention because they were so child-friendly. There was a wine crate in a corner piled high with books, colouring pencils, and metal tins of little plastic trinkets and toys which kept the kids seated and occupied throughout the meal. Also, they served the kids' meal first, around the same time as our entrées arrived, so that the children could eat first and not whine so much. The kids shared a menu enfants (kids' menu) and the food was divided into two plates directly in the kitchen. And although we only ordered one kid's meal to share, the restaurant served them two small ice-cream sundaes instead of just one, and without us asking for it. That was a nice touch. Their food was pretty good, too - J and I both had the asparagus ravioli which was fresh and obviously hand-made. Definitely worth a revisit.
______________
Obviously, this is a poor survey of Geneva's culinary offerings. It is not New York or London, but it does have a range of notable restaurants for a city of its size, especially if you drive and are willing to go a short distance to the smaller villages surrounding the southern end of the lake. For example, when my friend D visited last year we took her to an auberge out in the middle of nowhere near Jussy. We were surrounded by nothing except farmland and the food was memorably good, and recorded here in more detail.
Now that the weather is warming up, I'm looking forward to trying out more places, including one of those (in)famous farm brunches that everyone always mentions on Facebook. The typical farmhouse buffet brunch is something like CHF42 (S$59) per person for a variety of cold, continental offerings and some juices. Seriously, that's it. I mean, I know everything is made in-house and the jams are excellent etc, but CHF42 is really expensive. It makes me very curious so I guess one day I'll drag J and the kids one hour down the lake to try it. Luckily kids are charged according to every year of their age! I don't think I could stomach paying even CHF20 for a couple of croissants and some juice for the kids.
I still want to see if I can find a decent Indian restaurant here, and there's also an Afghan restaurant near The Bun's school that looks promising. It has also been a year since I last ate perch so maybe it's time to pop back into one of those lakeside restaurants, even if we aren't having any visitors anytime in the near future. (Boo!)