Switzerland: St Moritz, Badrutt’s Palace, Ticino, Lugano, Maggiore, Ascano
In a do-it-yourself world, it’s tempting to shun offers of help. But when the service is this good, resistance is useless.
If this were the finance section, it would be a takeover. In the crime pages, something between a pick-pocketing and a mugging. But in the annals of indulgent travel, the day I momentarily lose my breakfast at Badrutt’s Palace in St Moritz is actually old news, because it’s part of a service that’s so deft and assured, they’ve surely been at it for years.
You don’t check into Badrutt’s, you’re inducted. After being met at the station by one of its two Rolls-Royces for the 90-second drive to the hotel, our party is greeted by three morning-suited staff and taken not to a front desk but a lounge, where we write our details on a form. Don’t have to swipe a card, show a passport, zilch.
After that, unseen hands open doors, they apologise for my luggage arriving at my guestroom two minutes after I do. With a castle-like facade, walls rich with antlers and sprinkled with eclectic old furniture, the place creaks with history, although it never feels imposing. Regular guest Alfred Hitchcock supposedly got his inspiration for The Birds watching the swallows ride the afternoon thermals over the lake. And they still talk of the day a guest surprised his wife by having her birthday gift delivered by elephant.
At every turn in this hotel, someone or something is at hand to make being here almost effortless. So, in retrospect, having my breakfast appropriated is de rigueur. A waiter, spying me crossing the room under the weight of a dish of Bircher muesli and a glass of grapefruit juice, merges into my path, produces a tray and wordlessly relieves me of said items, allowing me to negotiate the final few steps to my table unencumbered.
In a world where selfie sticks, online banking and YouTube tutorials mean everyone is doing it for themselves, one’s first inclination is to shun such offers. But resistance is useless. On check-out, I’m ready for the 10-minute downhill walk to the station, but almost without realising it my suitcase disappears into the boot of a Roller. At the station, the driver asks me my destination, which is Chur, and off he heads, with my bag, on to the train.
Before “skiing, curling and sledging” took off at the turn of last century, St Moritz’s main attraction was the “most healing natural spring in Europe”. Not that the road to health was easy. One treatment was a litre of the magic water on the first day, two litres on the second and so on … up to 10. Then back down again.
Thankfully, St Moritz has since adopted solids. We taste our way through Conditorei Hanselmann for pralines, confituren and bonbonieren, and Hauser for its take on the classic Engadin nut cake, featuring caramelised walnuts. Then, after a walk across Muottas Muragl, a mountain with telescopic views to St Moritz and the Maloja Pass towards Italy, it’s into Gianottis sugar bakery in Pontresina. Fifth-generation chocolatier Roman Kling says: “We are specialised in couverture and it’s very tricky to get right. You need a good hand.” His brother Marco is so blessed. They have a variety of items, from nonpareilles (freckles) to chocolate shoes as spectacular as anything created by Jimmy Choo and, at $68 each, much cheaper.
Back in St Moritz, Chesa Veglia, an 18th-century farmhouse that’s one minute’s walk from the Palace (but I take the Roller) contains three restaurants, including Patrizier Stuben for high-class Swiss comfort food. But the dining highlight is at the Chesa Salis, a 16th-century hotel 10km from St Moritz, where chef Uwe Schmidt has truly earned his Gault Millau points.
There’s a delicate courgette roll with goat’s cheese, pine nuts and pomegranate, followed by pink venison with parsley puree and thyme polenta, then a carob tart with strawberry ice cream, each matched with distinctive local wine. These flavours are so redolent of Graubunden, in the far east of the country, where 15 per cent of the population are native speakers of Switzerland’s fourth official language, Romansh, described as “vulgar Latin” with smatterings of German and Italian. And only one other of Switzerland’s 26 cantons can claim it speaks like no other.
That’s next door in Ticino, which cooks, acts and feels Italian. The southernmost canton, this is where the rest of the country comes to recharge its solar batteries. Almost every Swiss I talk to has a corner of it they visit ritually, and while it’s still alpine, snow on the palm trees is rare. More common are diners on restaurant terraces along lake shores, feasting on risotto, polenta and a hearty braised beef dish called brasato, which teams beautifully with Ticino’s uber-prevalent merlot.
Its most stately town is Lugano, an ideal place for promenading beside its eponymous lake and into the Ciani Gardens. Once the private domain of two merchant brothers from Milan, the gardens are owned by the town, which puts out beach chairs and books each day for locals to grab an hour’s free reading or snooze under the sycamore trees.
The most interesting food is squirrelled away in Lugano’s maze of streets and lanes. You enter the smallgoods heaven of D. Gabbani under a curtain of salami, and many combinations of its sumptuous meats and pickles can be piled into a takeaway panini. The sweeter stuff is nearby at Grand Cafe Al Porto where, Heston Blumenthal-like, what looks like a glazed tomato is a glorious raspberry mousse tart. And the hot chocolate should be labelled chocolate soup. And should this sugar hit wear off, I’ve grabbed a cherry panettone for later.
Lugano has a companion lake, Maggiore, at the top of which lies the village of Ascona, where all this Italian-influenced Swissness reaches its pinnacle. Ascona looks carefree and it is. On a late-afternoon cruise, hang-gliders float down to the beach near the golf course, and the only person in a hurry is the naked gentleman with long white hair and beard steaming past in a tinny. “Another day in paradise,” says our skipper, as we clink our glasses of local prosecco.
If winery visiting for you is tramping in the terroir, you might be initially disappointed with Delea, which occupies a big shed behind Ascona with nary a vine in sight. Most of Ticino’s grapes come from about 200 growers across the canton, each with just a few rows of vines around their homes.
But the cellar here is the real deal, full of barrels of excellent merlot and glass jars of grappa. Given 85 per cent of Ticino grapes are merlot, it’s the only region in the world to make a white one. It’s dry and, according to Delea’s cellar door manager Gian Andrea, best drunk quite cold. Which is what we do tonight, at the uniquely Ticino experience, the grotto.
Grottos were traditionally caves in hillsides where the locals would mature their wines, salamis and cheeses, and sell them to travellers. They’ve evolved into permanent taverns, serving the local specialties. At Grotto America, above Locarno, we settle on the terrace and ask for “whatever’s good”. We should have been more particular. Out comes an enormous board of prosciutto, pancetta and the less-salty coppa hams, bresaola, fatty salami and cheese with fig mustard. Then it’s Ticinese sausages with porcini sauce, polenta, risotto parmigiana, roasted rabbit, brasato and thinly sliced roast vegetables. To finish there’s panna cotta with raspberry, malt-chocolate mousse and a gorgeous torta di pane. Ascona has such an alluring position at the top of Lake Maggiore, you could pitch a tent and still feel you were living it up.
So it takes something special to draw one’s gaze indoors, and the lakeside Hotel Eden Roc pulled it off by giving local interior designer Carlo Rampazzi “carta Bianca”. He went for pop art with lime green bedheads, red walls, cream and chocolate hound’s-tooth checked chairs. And that’s just one suite; few of the 95 guestrooms are alike, although a recent refurb has toned things down. “Carlo is older and more wiser,” says manager Andreas Gartmann. “Now it’s more sand and champagne. But he still loves orange.”
Yet exuberant youth is still alive at the Eden Roc. Although it has two venues with 32 Gault Millau points between them, the warm evening demands we dine lakeside at La Casetta, on the relaxed menu of Eden Roc’s young gun Marco Campanella. There’s Argentinian shrimps, a scallop and asparagus risotto, filet of beef and an indulgent tiramisu. Like at the Palace, I have found that in Ticino, too, resistance is useless.
Jeremy Bourke was a guest of Switzerland Tourism.
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MORE TO THE STORY
A yield of 1kg might not seem much for a tea plantation, but given it’s the only one in western Europe, all praise to the Casa del Te, on Monte Verita above Ascona in Ticino. The tea was planted by a pharmacist in 2005 for its healing properties, reckoning it was worth a try in Switzerland. After all, says manager Tobias Denzler, “This plant needs a cold season, even in Asia.” The pharmacist made the tea feel at home, planting it in a Japanese garden format, but it took seven years for the first harvest. To maintain authenticity, a Japanese expert flies in annually to harvest and roll the tea by hand. And a Japanese woman performs the tea ceremony twice a month. Otherwise, Tobias and his wife, Corinne, conduct tours and tastings of the teas they import from Asia, and the six we try are revelations. The ubiquitous green tea you mostly find in Japan is nothing like this aromatic wonder. It needs to be steamed, Corinne says, like cooking spinach. And the yellow truly is mellow. “It’s very expensive and very special. Once it was only for the emperor.” The star is pu’er. “Hypnotic” is my tasting note, and the harvested leaves take many years to mature. “We can compare it with wine matured in special wood,” Tobias says. Swiss tea is still a work in progress. “We have no culture [of tea in Europe],” Tobias says. “We started with Lipton teabags. We are not happy with our results so we need more experience.”
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