Monday, October 8, 2007

On Friday evening we were invited by friends to dine out at this restaurant.

The outside of the building is nothing special. In fact, it resembles a very old, traditional Swiss home. The inside has been converted to a restaurant from what seems to have once been the living room/dining room. It's small and very crowded with tables. You can easily bang elbows with the person sitting at the table behind you. It's also very hot with extremely poor air ventilation.

Wild meats are traditionally served from September 1 to mid December and this restaurant is not exception. Since our friends wanted to indulge in this Swiss tradition, we felt obliged to follow suit. My plate was swimming in a very dark, strong smelling gravy with several chunks of dark meat that resembled stewing beef. By the smell of it, I knew it wasn't stewing beef! On the plate was also a few brussels sprouts, some shredded red cabbage, and some chestnuts. Everything had that dark gravy running through it.

I ate half of it and washed it down with wine & water... LOTS of water!!

That night, I was sick!!

My stomach rebelled so much that, even after leaving my meal in the toilette and taking Tylenol to relieve the pain, I still was unable to sleep from the stomach cramps. In fact, I didn't start feeling better until late Saturday afternoon.

Never again will I go to this restaurant!! What a dreadful experience!!

This wasn't the first time I had a horrific restaurant experience in Switzerland. Last year, on my birthday, we went to this restaurant.

I ordered 1/2 small fried chicken in a basket with fries and a white vegetable sauce. I forget the name of this dish but it's quite popular here. When it came, the first thing I saw was that the chicken still had tons of pin feathers attached. I took off all the skin because it just made me sick to look at those pin feathers. I couldn't understand how a restaurant could serve fried chicken covered in pin feathers!! If this would happen in Canada, the restaurant would be closed down right now!!

I ate the fries and a salad. I saw the cook come out and go to a table of what appeared to be friends. He shook their hands, then proceeded to pick up their empty beer glasses, 3 of them, by putting his fingers INSIDE the glasses. He put the glasses in a rubber tub located close to the cash register. Then he proceeded straight to the the counter where the pizza is prepared and started to knead and toss the pizza dough WITHOUT WASHING HIS HANDS! I almost gagged!!!

The next day, I wrote an email to the Dept of Health and described the entire incident. Within a couple of days, I got a response from someone called Andreas Baumgartner who wrote that meat is never cleaned before being cooked!!! He wrote that the high temperatures used for cooking would kill all bacteria. Really?? Hmmmm...

Obviously high cooking temperatures don't kill pin feathers!!

This experience was a true eye opener for me!!!

I thanked him and told him that his email would be forwarded to Canadian Health authorities to provide information for Canadian tourists that planned to visit Switzerland. I'm sure most of my Canadian friends & family would not be too thrilled to eat in a restaurant that served uncleaned meat and had a cook who didn't follow safe food handling procedures.

He never wrote back. I hope I made him think.