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| Zurich Altstadt |
Our waiter, Johir, who comes from Bangladesh and has lived
in Zurich for eight years, took our order and served us bread and olives. We
selected the Cami 2006 Amarone red wine dela Valpolicella, a robust full-bodied
and aromatic wine that just fills your mouth with elegant pleasure and lingers
with fine scents of dried fruit.
The elegant roundness and sense of adventure
of Amarone makes it one of Italy’s wine treasures and a great choice to go with
a flavorful Italian meal. We’d first ordered a glass each, but after a sip,
Nina looked at me and we both nodded: we needed a bottle.
The combination of dark and green olives with artichoke
hearts and exquisite wine sent us both spinning into a sensual paradise. According to Johi, the olives are olive oil-cured
with fine herbs and presented with artichokes. The green olives were likely
French provencal (imported from France); recognized for their excellent
association with bread and cheese. The dark olives were likely the petite
French niçoise
olives that have a sweet nutty flavor, and are known for their delicious
pairing with bread and wine (fancy that! Just what we had). They may also have
been Italian ligura, gaeta, or lugano olives. Either way, they were exquisite
and we had to order more of them too.
Nina poured some Fiorucci
aceto balsamico di Modena into a golden pool of extra virgin olive oil
(Cubrol oro) and let the bread soak up the delectable mixture. As she gazed up
in distracted euphoria I stole several more olives.
The award-winning restaurant (open since 1994) is best known
for its brick-oven pizza, lovingly Cucina as the best pizza place
in Zurich, and possibly all of Switzerland!
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| Toulouse gets a tour with Saritas |
Saritas, who bakes with gusto and
penache, invited me to oversee his team make their pizzas. Oval individual-sized
pies are imaginatively created on a table by the oven then baked in the Cucina
wood-burning stove and served on wooden cutting boards.
The imaginative variety
of pizzas is immense. The choice occupies at least two pages on their menu that
includes antipasti, zuppe (soup), salatoni (salad), hausgemachte or pasta fatta
in casa (house-made pasta), risotto, carne
(meat dishes) and pesci (fish
dishes). Their pizzas al forno a legno
(from wood burning stove) include a delectable variety of over thirty choices
(that I counted on the menu) such as the Genovese
(tomato mozzarella, ricotta and pesto), the Carnivora
(tomato mozzarella, herb butter and sliced veal) and the Vichinga (tomato mozzarella with salmon and rocket lettuce).
Intriguing
ingredient selections include truffle oil, reisencrevettenschwanze,
capers, raw rindshuft, rucola, rocket
and eggplant.
Of course, being who we are, we didn’t order pizza. Instead,
we both ordered something from their hausgemachte
pasta. Nina ordered Tagliatelle
(noodles) ai funghi porcini (noodles
with mushrooms in a Weisenwein sauce—oohlala! It was fun and zesty with a
lingering sweetness). I chose the Cannelloni
alla fiorentina (Cannelloni filled with ricotta and spinach with mozzarella
baked on top in a creamy rose sauce—“Perfeto!”
or as they say in Switzerland, “Ausgezeichnet!”).
This “comfort food” pinged all the sensual pleasure sites in my brain and sent
my whiskers curling with the elegantly married tastes of cheese, spinach, pasta
and sauce. We shared and congratulated one another on our “ausgezeichnet” choices. In both cases, the meals paired exquisitely
with the wine and the olives.
We had no room for desert (having filled on second-helpings
of antipasti). I was stuffed! (Ok... enough of the jokes, already!) But the ristorante serves some wonderful deserts according to the
menu and I'll be back.
Meals are advertized as going on average of 55 CHF when you count all the
dishes and wine. Main dishes average 21.50 to 24.50 CHF.
Contact information:
http://www.cucinarestaurant.ch
MO bis FR: 11h30-14h00 / 17h30-23h00
SA & SO: 11h30-23h00
MO bis FR: 11h30-14h00 / 17h30-23h00
SA & SO: 11h30-23h00
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