Green party: a guide to Zürich’s flourishing plant-based dining scene

This article is part of a guide to Zürich from FT Globetrotter

Traditional Swiss food is all about animals. The stereotypes are true. This is the land of dairy, sausage and veal. In the celebrated (and delicious) Olma Bratwurst the three are combined. Sausage salad is the national dish no one talks about.

And yet.

Zürich, Switzerland’s biggest city, also has one of the most interesting vegetarian-food scenes in Europe. Indeed, Hiltl, a small local chain that started in 1898, claims it is the world’s oldest restaurant catering to those who don’t eat meat.

The intense focus on the environmental and ethical consequences of our eating — felt especially keenly by a younger generation of gastronauts — has, in any case, supercharged Zürich’s love affair with vegetarian dining.

From tasting menus to buffets, the city has meat-free menus for every taste and wallet. Here is a selection of the best: excellent, even by the standards of this unreconstructed meat-eater. And in any case, if all else fails, there’s always fondue.

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1. Dar

Gasometerstrasse 5, 8005 Zürich

• Good for: Dinner with friends

• Not so good for: Formal or work dining

• FYI: Dar has an adjoining cocktail bar serving its own creations — a perfect pre- or post-dinner spot for a tipple. The restaurant also serves a mean brunch on weekends

• Prices: Sharing menu, SFr72 a head (about £64); sharing plates, SFr18–SFr34 (about £16–£30)

• Website; Directions

Dar turned veggie during the pandemic. What was once one of Zürich’s trendiest and buzziest restaurants, serving delicious meze and grilled meats, is now one of Zürich’s trendiest and buzziest restaurants serving vegan food. Acclaimed Moroccan-Spanish chef Zineb “Zizi” Hattab took over the venue in 2021.

The small-plates format lends itself to informal, convivial sharing meals between friends. This is not a restaurant for whispered conversation. The cuisine is still inflected with north African and Mediterranean flavours, but with occasional interlopers such as the KFM: super-meaty oyster mushrooms fried in batter and then glazed with a sticky, spicy sauce.

The menu at Dar is constantly changing, but highlights on my last trip were the radish escabeche, the citric zip of which was beautifully offset by a bean cream, with dried plums and crunches of fried cashew; and the crowd-pleasing Catalan-style bomba with all the flavour of a chorizo ragù filling but none of the actual chorizo. Weds–Sun, 6–10pm; brunch, Sat–Sun, 10am–2pm; cocktail bar, Weds–Sun, 6pm–midnight

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2. Dapur

Schaffhauserstrasse 373, 8050 Zürich

• Good for: Authentic Indonesian cuisine

• Not so good for: City-centre convenience

• FYI: Dapur has a limited number of covers, so booking is advised

• Prices: Mains, SFr19–SFr30.50 (about £17–£27)

• Website; Directions

In a city that trades on safe and samey, Dapur is a welcome and entirely authentic gastronomic addition that brings subtle Indonesian cooking to a city still dominated by the European culinary canon. The restaurant was opened by partners Diane Bucher-Maweikere and Rachel Strack in 2011. Having chosen — on ethical grounds — to become vegan themselves, they tentatively decided to see whether they could introduce a greater range of plant-based dishes onto the menu at Dapur in 2018. In their own telling, they soon realised that they could take the whole menu vegan without actually having to compromise on its quality. Dapur’s loyal customer base do not seem to have minded: the restaurant is still consistently full. This is not a tablecloths kind of place, but the service is swift and attentive, and frankly you’re here for the flavours, not the ceremony. The room — with a mixed crowd of couples and groups of friends — has the slight air of a high-end spa. Buddhas and shadow puppets will do that to a place.

The menu encompasses a range of regional Indonesian specialities. Some dishes — for instance, the nasi goreng with plant-based “chicken” — have simply swapped out meat for fake meat; or, like the lumpia (Indonesian spring rolls), they were vegan anyway. And in others, existing Asian meat alternatives have replaced their meat component: jackfruit steps up to cleverly supplant a yielding piece of beef in the deeply flavoured rendang, for example.

The signature seitan sindanglaya I had when last at Dapur was a particular revelation. The panéed seitan was a more than adequate stand-in for a piece of chicken, the role of which in either case was to be a mere vehicle for the transport of the absolutely belting peanut sauce it came in: light, aromatic and tangy with tamarind. Tues–Sat, 5.30pm–10.30pm

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3. Neue Taverne

Glockengasse 8, 8001 Zürich

• Good for: Clever, decadent veggie food

• Not so good for: Waistlines

• FYI: Larger groups can order a surprise “Tavolata” menu for the whole table at SFr105 (about £95) a head. There’s a refreshingly wide selection of homemade non-alcoholic drinks too.

• Prices: Sharing plates, SFr16–SFr35 (about £14–£31)

• Website; Directions

Neue Taverne is the vegetarian sibling of two of the Zürich gastro-cognoscenti’s favourite restaurants, Bauernschänke and Neumarkt. The trio is helmed by Nenad Mlinarevic, the Swiss star chef who held two Michelin stars for his cooking at the Park Hotel Vitznau near Lucerne.

Neue Taverne has a Michelin star for its inventive, high-end vegetarian cuisine: “Vegetarian with benefits”, as the website coyly puts it.

I harbour a slight grudge for having once been turned away by the maître d’ at Neumarkt — a restaurant that styles itself as a bistro — because I had the audacity to turn up for lunch at 1.50pm. (This being Switzerland, most people have been up since daybreak, and at such a late hour are already turning their thinking to dinner.)

This piece, though, is a recommendation for Neue Taverne, which when I went was packed with very happy and merry evening diners, all being looked after by an attentive and smooth-running front-of-house team.

Neue Taverne toys with formality. It is informal. But not. Eating in its wood-panelled, intimate dining room, with the kitchen’s pass at its centre, is not entirely unlike being shut inside a piece of modernist Danish furniture. (Or at least what I imagine that to be like.) The same could be said for the cuisine: it’s polished, rich, yet restrained. The “caviar of the field”, which came in a little tin with a mother-of-pearl spoon and a basket of fresh blini, was a fun way to borrow the ceremony of the dish it apes, even if it offered a very different flavour profile (with a yolky-custardy savoury curd underneath a layer of finger limes and chives). A dish of asparagus was executed with pleasing decadence, heaped with shavings of truffle and a beurre blanc.

What Neue Taverne does well is quiet luxury — a culinary art often overlooked in cooking that does not deal with expensive cuts of animal. You might blanche at the pricing, given that no meat is involved here, but as with all high-end cuisine, it’s the processes and technique that are the real costs. Neue Taverne does not shy from the elaborate. If the French had invented vegetarianism, it would probably look something like this. Mon–Fri, noon–2pm and 6pm–midnight; Saturday, noon–3pm and 6pm–midnight

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4. Marktküche

Feldstrasse 98, 8004 Zürich

• Good for: Serious, first-rate food

• Not so good for: À la carte dining

• FYI: Book well in advance, as Marktküche deservingly packs out

• Prices: Tasting menus from four courses at SFr84 (about £75) to eight courses at SFr144 (about £128)

• Website; Directions

The joy of Marktküche is that is an extremely serious restaurant that does not make you feel like you are having to endure an evening in an Extremely Serious Restaurant.

I’ve eaten finer food there recently than in many Michelin-starred venues I’ve been in over the past year, only without the hauteur. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t have a star. It’s the only reason I can think of.

At first glance, this could be any zhuzhed-up local: let’s say a much-loved neighbourhood trattoria, recently inherited by a son, old-fashioned corner bar intact but with exposed bulbs dangling from the ceiling rather than Chianti fiaschi, and a lick of whitewash here and there.

This is part of the secret to its charm. Because as soon as three absolutely perfect amuse-gueules arrive and an order for an aperitif is taken — before the menu has even arrived, exactly as should be the case — it dawns that you are in the hands of a seriously good front-of-house team. Then you taste the trio — a spherified yolk of custard in a tiny crisp tart; a mouse-sized pillow of soft bread blanketed in truffle; and a barbecued, caramelised chewy floret of cauliflower — and you joyfully realise that, shoot, the kitchen is exceptionally fine too.

Marktküche is chef-owner Tobias Hoesli’s first restaurant, opened eight years ago. In fact it used to be, I find out later, a pizzeria. There are two main rooms, softly lit but with plenty of bustle that saves the venue from the deathless hush that plagues most places you go to for food this good. At Marktküche there is no à la carte option: you’re having a tasting menu of whatever Hoesli thinks is good and in season. You just pick the number of courses you want. It’s going to be an expensive evening, yes, but then, this is Zürich.

Highlights of the meal I had included a delicious velouté of caramelised shallots — calling this a soup, with all the one-dimensionality that implies, would be a serious category error — and a small steamed bun with a fricassee of wild mushrooms from the Gotthard pass. There were also some flawless cappelletti. Midway through the meal, with a flourish, I was presented with a single bud from a Szechuan pepper, resting all alone, Wonderland-ishly, like a magic pill on a white dish. It was like a little nip of floral novocaine: nature’s original palate cleanser.

I could also rhapsodise about the wine pairing. Can you taste November? I felt so, as, mid-April, I sipped — between mouthfuls of mountain mushroom — at the fine Piedmontese barbaresco that the sommelier had selected.

Perhaps that pepper bud had chemical properties I wasn’t aware of. Mon–Fri, 5.30pm–11.30pm

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5. Hiltl

Sihlstrasse 28, 8001 Zürich, and other locations

• Good for: Variety and volume

• Not so good for: Lingering lunches

• FYI: Hiltl has four spacious venues in Zürich’s centre, and two on the lake for more relaxed summer dining. You can also take everything from the buffet to go

• Prices: Buffet, SFr5.80 (about £5) per 100g. À la carte mains, SFr25.50–SFr35.50 (about £22.50–£31.50)

• Website; Directions

Hiltl began serving vegetarian food to the befuddled burghers of Zürich 125 years ago and is now a city institution. At most outlets the principle is simple: load up your plate with food from a huge buffet of vegetarian dishes. Take your plate to the counter. They weigh it, and tell you how much you owe them.

The menu is tilted towards Indian cuisine — with an excellent selection of dals and curries — but all manner of tastes are catered for. At Hiltl’s main branch on Sihtstrasse, right in the city centre, there is also a more formal sit-down restaurant with table service. Mon–Thurs, 7am–10pm; Fri, 7am–11pm; Sat, 8am–11pm; Sun, 10am–10pm

Where do you go in Zürich for plant-based food? Tell us in the comments. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter