Swiss food:What do the Swiss eat?
Everything is expensive including the food so what do you eat and adding to that what do the Swiss eat? Well, luckily for me I found some cheap food in the form of ethnic delicacies.
What did I eat? Ethnic food
I ate Thai food for an entire week mainly because of trying to economize. Not only was it affordable but very tasty and portions were large and I may add that one of my favourite cuisines is Thai. While fellow hostelers were busy buying cheap and cooking bland in the hostel kitchen I was equally doing it the affordable way but without the added stress of cooking and skimping on meat and condiments.
Apart from Thai food I saw several Kebab places and although I didn’t patronize these I was told that the Turkish eating places are quite affordable. Switzerland is expensive but you can still have filling cheap meals via ethnic restaurants. The time saved on cooking, buying groceries, carrying around groceries and ‘guarding’ that in shared hostel refrigerators can be better spent on exploring the breathtaking scenery. One thing to note though is that on Sundays most places are closed I really, really had to look hard for a restaurant and the only one I found that day was a McDonald’s in the train station selling tasteless, expensive, rubbery fare!
Swiss cuisine
Different parts of the country are influenced heavily by neighbouring cultures and of course the language from those cultures dominate. In Geneva, French is spoken; in Zurich, Swiss German; in the parts that border Italy, Italian and of course there is Romansh. The food most indulged in depends on the region but overall it’s a blend of all these. However, on hearing about Switzerland the first things in terms of food that I think about are cheese fondue and chocolates.
As I mentioned Swiss cuisine is quite international due to the various cultural influences in the different regions of the country. For instance in Ticino, which borders Italy and where Italian is spoken – one of the official languages of Switzerland – saffron risotto is quite popular. You can check out these other sites for more information on Swiss food. This one even has recipes.
