Neue Taverne

Every year around Christmas, I go for a nice dinner with my Miss. When I read that the team of Bauernschänke is opening a second restaurant dedicated to vegetables, I knew the location of this year's personal Christmas dinner - the "Neue Taverne"! Happy me, I was able to make a reservation and we went there for dinner.

Neue Taverne

The restaurant is located in the old town of Zurich. We went there by strolling through the Christmas market on Münsterhof - it got us in the right mood.

Ambience & service

The interieur is quite interesting. The team preserved the old ambiance with the wood panelled walls. It gives a warm and cozy atmosphere. When you make a reservation online, they "warn" you that most likely you will share the table with other people. Indeed, we were seated at a 4-people table, with the other couple already being there. It was ok - as it is quite busy aka loud, you will quite fast dive into your own bubble, i.e. forget about the talk of the other couple. Service is attentive and polite, but all the waiters were also quite busy! They did a good job, nevertheless, you somehow feel the busyness.

Food

The food in the "Neue Taverne" is centered around vegetables. The menu contains about a dozen of dishes (ranging from 12 - 31 CHF) in three categories: raw/fermented/marinated - cooked/roasted/braised - cereals. The idea is sharing plates, i.e. you order about 3 dishes per person. We started out with the bread and its special sauce! Sounds silly, but it was great! The bread was fresh, still warm and with a wonderful crust - the dinner was off to a good start. We then followed up with two plates from the first category raw/fermented/marinated. Number one were raw chicory leaves with either a chili/sesame or yoghurt sauce on it! The leaves were fresh and I liked the combination of the bitterness of the chicory with both of the dedicated sauces. What really blew me away was the second dish of this category, however! Stem turnip, thinly sliced and wrapped as a kind of a tortellini seasoned with Furikake ( a Japanese seasoning)! Wow - what a great dish!

From the category cooked/roated/braised, we opted for their special "plant-based" chicken yakitori. The plant-based chicken is a product of the ETH start-up .planted. I already had the chance to try it out once before and was quite impressed back then! My Miss also was wowed by the texture and taste! I hope you can soon buy the product in selected retail stores, would be great to put it on the BBQ grill next year! The second dish in this category was called "celery - apple - hazelnut - whey"! Again, a very good choice - in particular, the combination of celery and apple was delicious.

We then moved on to the last category cereals. We opted again for two dishes. On the one hand, a pasta dish (casarecce with broccoli and an emulsion parmesan)! Honestly, what a dish! I was already amazed by the quality of the previous dishes - but this one! Mmmh, wow! The homemade pasta, the broccoli - both al dente in this parmesan emulsion! It was so tasty, real comfort food! I loved it! On the other hand and to finish, we had a dish consisting of 20 different grains, Jerusalem artichoke and an onsen-egg! What a finish - it was a real pleasure to dig into the dish with the spoon! The nutty flavor of the Jerusalem artichoke went wonderful with the grains and then you have the texture of the onsen egg on top of it - was mouth-watering!

So, we had the bread and then two dishes of each category - it was enough for us to skip dessert, even though the dessert menu looked tempting as well.

A few words to the wine list! It's also quite particular, featuring a lot of lesser known wines & regions - and of top of it, the wines often are natural wines! I made some mixed experiences with natural wines and was quite sceptical. I went for a wine from the Ardèche region called "In he shadow of the morning sun" - what an idyllic name :-)! It is produced by Anders Frederik Steen, based on the Grenache grape. Also here - a very good choice, the best natural wine we had so far! The guy, Anders Frederik Steen from Denmark is both a chef and sommelier, now turned winemaker! Amongst others, he was a sommelier at the well-known Noma restaurant. His wines are based on a natural fermentation, nothing is added.

Conclusion

All in all, the bill amounted to 275 CHF - not cheap, but it was well worth it!

What a night out! I could not have chosen a better location for the Christmas dinner with my Miss! I think it was the restaurant highlight of 2019! The respect of the products, the combinations, the harmony and contradictions of the flavors; it was - as the French would say - just "impeccable!"

Go there - my advice!

(I am better now with taking pictures in the restaurant, did not forget it - below a few impressions from our visit to Neue Taverna!)