At The Table: Kronenhalle

Lunch is the most enjoyable meal of the day. Especially if it is, as it should be, indulgent. Long. A little frivolous. Lunch should be excessive because it is so transient. It is neither a way to start or end a day. This transience is an intrinsic part of the pleasure.

A lunch that lasts until almost dinner is the best kind of lunch. It should move through a series of gears of increasing intensity and decadence until it spits you back out on the street, a little dazed, very full, around five in the afternoon.

For the successful lunch you need the required stage. And the ideal restaurant to eat lunch in is something old, reassuringly sturdy and magnificently unchanging. The 21st century shouldn’t exist here. It should have flawless white table cloths, a small floral arrangement, and a legion of doting waiters. Multiple courses, at least three different kinds of alcoholic beverages, and a coffee, are required, in order for it to feel suitably gluttonous. You should try and find time for a digestif.

These decadent and anticipatory thoughts were front of mind as we approached Kronenhalle in Zurich. From the outside Kronenhalle is magically unassuming. It is nestled next to an expensive and discreet looking watch shop and a branch of the chain restaurant Vapiano. It is on a busy street somewhere in between the Opernhaus and the Kunstmuseum. Its opaque windows offer little hint of the wonders behind them. It is the most famous, and finest restaurant, in Zurich.

Switzerland is not known for the breadth of its cuisine. It is more or less Germanic; hearty, solid, with a little flourish of Italian or French depending which of the country’s cantons you might find yourself in, or what time of year you’re there. The things they do well are satisfyingly gout inducing: cheeses, meats, wines, heavy and satisfying. Within those narrow confines of traditional Swiss cuisine, though, Kronenhalle is the best, the highest expression. I cannot visit Zurich without stopping there.

Last year the restaurant celebrated its 100th anniversary. It was founded in 1925, by Gottlieb and Hulda Zumsteg, and was taken over by their son in the 50s. Hulda was the force behind the restaurant in its early years, slowly renovating the dilapidated building they’d taken over. It quickly became the favoured spot of Zurich’s artistic milieu. James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti all became regulars, and Hulda would famously and happily give free meals to struggling bohemians.

But much of its current fame is owed to Hulda’s son, Gustav, who, after a career in Paris as a silk merchant — where he had become a friend and colleague of the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga — took over the Kronenhalle in 1957. He used its walls to exhibit the art collection he had slowly been building up.

And it’s this which provides some of the joy of eating at Kronenhalle. To be sat, eating a schnitzel, under the watchful gaze of a Picasso or Chagall or Miro, is a rare and enlivening experience.

There’s a comforting mittel europa luxury to proceedings, for all the modernism on the walls you are also surrounded by canton flags, guild hall municipality, leather and brass and dark wood, and despite being very luxurious, it's bracingly unpretentious. To have a long lunch in Kronenhalle is not to feel suffocated.

We settle into a table, order a few glasses of beer to relax, peruse the menu, which is simple and reassuring and Swiss; rosti, veal, schnitzel, blinis, potato salads. We order a bottle of pleasingly classic white wine, and a selection of food.

Much of the charm of dining at Kronenhalle is that your food’s final flourish happens table side. Your lunch is revealed from under shining sterling silver platters. The steak Robespierre is finished to your liking with a performative blast of flame. Rosti is portioned up for you by your waitress. Soup comes from the tureen. There is plenty of cream sauce. It is the platonic ideal of a good lunch.

We begin with prawn cocktails and carpaccio of beef, above us hangs a Miro, which like the prawn cocktail, is primary coloured. The tempo lifts with the arrival of the rosti, wheeled over on its trolley and portioned out with well practised turns of a spoon, the crust satisfyingly shattering. The main event is the schnitzel, — expansive, crisp, doused with a squeeze of lemon — and the aforementioned Robespierre, lit up in a gesture of pure theatre, and which draws jealous looks from the Swiss grandmothers on the table next to us. The waiters bring out our sides and salads. We drift towards the afternoon. The wine is finished. Our napkins, once pristine, are now ruffled. We let out satisfied sighs.

We retire, after much gastronomic enjoyment, to the bar, for dessert and a cocktail. It is now late afternoon. The bar is almost deserted. Too early for a pre-dinner aperitif. We have the place to ourselves. We order a Griesskopfli, a traditional Swiss speciality, made of semolina, and covered in compote and cream. We relax into a martini, heading deep into the evening.

Eventually and sadly we are back on the street, blinking and unsteady and back in between the watch shop and Vapiano, just where we left them hours ago. We are dazed, and very full, and already thinking, as we hail a taxi to the airport, of when we might be back.