I will take a deep breath in, I will hold it, I will exhale and I will introduce you to my first encounter with Swiss food. Needless to say, it was not good. Do you want salty? Because this is how you get salty. But ask yourselves first, are you really ready for it? Leggo.

Wirtshaus Galliker, Schützenstr. 1, 6003 Luzern

OK, the intro might seem a little overdramatic but bear with me because it is all worth it. Not only this entry will be entertaining, it will be educational! Can you believe that? I am very excited. All for the wrong reasons but still.

Anyway, we ended up visiting Luzern the same week we relocated to Zürich. There was a light festival happening in the town, so we decided to check it out before it ends. Luzern is a very pretty place and while the light installations themselves were rather basic (we saw some cool projections though!), the walk alongside the lake, the river and through the old town proved quite nice. All this walking elicited the need to have a dinner somewhere and this is where Wirtshaus Galliker came in.

I did SOME research beforehand, it’s not like we walked into this restaurant accidentally: I WANTED to eat here. A family-run institution counting over 140 years of service, it was filled to the brim with happy locals setting us up with great expectation only to mercilessly shatter all our dreams in the next hour or so. The memory of this still haunts me. Galliker, I will forever remember your name.

Let’s for a moment disregard that depressing looking plate of rösti/tripe and concentrate on the other Swiss creation – a cheese stuffed veal schnitzel otherwise known as Cordon bleu. Now scroll back up, look at it, REALLY look at it. I will try, with the best of my ability, to translate this 41 CHF dish to you.

Let’s begin with the LEAST offensive part of the plate – those sad, dry, definitely-fried-from-frozen fries. Need I say more? I do not think so. I did not have to try one to see that they were a complete disgrace. I did eventually eat one for research purposes and I can tell you that it was not worth it.

Now, let’s move on to the other accompaniment on this marvelous plate – the overboiled, oversalted, over-seasoned mushy vegetables (oh, definitely boiled from frozen). This is the educational part, by the way. Only my Eastern European friends will understand what I am talking about if I mention Vegeta – the handy dandy veggie MSG seasoning otherwise known as The Flavour behind the Iron curtain.

Those vegetables on the plate? THEY WERE SOAKED THROUGH with what I at first thought was Vegeta but later learned is something called Knorr Aromat. Now, Knorr Aromat is something very near and dear to a Swiss person’s heart and I do not want to hurt anybody’s feelings but it’s singlehandedly the worst ingredient you can use to season your food.

I mean, c’mon. Switzerland is so protective of its great produce (and there is good produce, for sure), the least you could do is LET THE FRIKIN’ VEGETABLES SHINE WITH THEIR NATURAL TASTE. But oh no no, no no no, what would be this great transgression? Veggies? Unseasoned? No Knorr Aromat? IMPOSSIBLE. Thanks for ruining my tastebuds, by the way. That seasoning is instant death.

So, the fries were bad, the veggies were worse, you think that Cordon bleu was safe from ruin? Nuh-uh, dear boys and girls, not so. It was the saltiest piece of dry meat I have ever had. It was hard to chew and hard to swallow and it was stuffed with cheese (it too was oversalted) which made absolute zero difference in making-the-dish-palatable department.

My head in my hands with tears in my eyes I am reliving this absolute food crime for your reading pleasure and I weep… for why I have I come to this country and why do I subject myself to such culinary tortures? God, please save me from myself because I simply cannot. Lah.

At this point I have nothing much left to say. Did I encourage Matas to order a plate of 25 CHF tripe for the old Spanish times’ sake? I do not know. And if you think that the picture does not look too appetising, the dish did not help to clear its bad name. Every. Single. Bite. The tripe. The sauce. The rösti. Were just too damn SALTY.

Salty salty salty salty – this is truly the constant and unavoidable refrain in my eating out life now. And if salty is not enough, BAM! a wild Knorr Aromat appears. Pray for me because I have no idea how long I have until I preserve my insides for all eternity.

With all that salt coursing through our veins and drying out our lips, we were glad to het to drink some local wine at “reasonable prices” – 100 ml of rosé and red went for 5 CHF and 6.50 CHF accordingly. Did it help assuage our hurts? It’s a 100 ml pour for Christ’s sake, what do you think? Of course not! The water in this country costs too: 3 CHF for a jug of 500 ml from the TAP.

To sum things up, WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH KNORR ARROMAT in this country??? And salting everything to the last dying breath of a withering cell.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk on how not to do food. Period.

BONUS: education continued

I stalked the seasoning isle of my local grocery store Migros to show you just HOW MUCH of Knorr Aromat there is in this country. Powder. Cubes. Big boxes. Small dispensers. Liquid. I cannot go on… it’s just so demoralising. Oh and little did I know some wild Vegeta was lurking just around the corner. My God. Switzerland, get your shit together and arrive to the 21st century, we tend to no longer do artificial seasonings!