Petermann's Kunststuben
Küsnacht
Cuisines: European, Continental, French
About
In 2007, a leading Swiss newspaper, Sonntags Blick, defined this as the best restaurant in Switzerland. Prior to that, The Zagat European edition described this as the best restaurant in Europe. Since it opened in the early 1980s, it has attracted most of the well-heeled gastronomes in Zurich, as well as such notables as the emperor of Japan, the Swiss president, and American entertainer Tina Turner, who lived nearby for a while. Relentlessly elegant, but with a staff that's more hip and alert than you may expect, it lies 10km (6 miles) south of Zurich in the hamlet of Küsnacht, near Rapperswil, within a house whose date of construction (1873) is marked above a wood-burning stove in the dining room. Most of the year, the restaurant accommodates only 45 diners, but in summer an outdoor terrace ringed with shrubs and flowers adds another 40 places. Amid a collection of upscale accoutrements and well-rehearsed service rituals, you can enjoy such inventive dishes as a "cigar" of foie gras with black truffles and sauterne aspic, roasted duck with honey-lemon sauce, lobster with a purée of celery, lobster-studded potato salad with a leek-based cream sauce, stuffed squid with a confit of fennel, and young hen stuffed with shrimp. Dessert may include a gratin of wild strawberries with cannelloni stuffed with almond paste. You'll find almost anything you order irresistible within a setting that some of the most seasoned and jaded diners in the world have found utterly charming.
