The French Connection

How different is the food in Switzerland’s German and French-speaking regions? Zurich resident Adam H. Graham crosses the röstigraben to explore the French portion of Swiss cuisine

- Zurich resident Adam H. Graham

My Italian-born guide Angela is twisting her Fiat Cinquecento around the corkscrew turns of the achingly scenic Lavaux. We’re in Switzerland’s UNESCO-listed wine country, a stretch of honey-stoned, chocolate box villages set amongst grape terraces built by monks in the 12th-century. It’s just one segment of the so-called Swiss Riviera that stretches for 30-kilometres from Lausanne to Montreux along the southern shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Léman). The whole of it swoops down a steep hillside towards the lake, which gives this white wine growing region its Med-like microclimate.

I met Angela just moments ago in my Montreux hotel lobby, where she picks me up for our day in the vineyards. The first thing she says to me in her Napoli accent: “You live in the Swiss-German part of Switzerland? I’m so sorry.”

It isn’t the first time I’d heard disdain for German-speaking Switzerland. It’s a sentiment you frequently hear in the Italian and French-speaking parts of Switzerland, especially in regards to Swiss German cuisine. And I understand why. The food of Romandie is marked by butter-based sauces, elaborate pastry, and cuisine that pays homage to France’s ancien regime as well as Savoyard, Burgundian, Alsatian, Napoleonic, and Gaulish heritage.

Angela parked the car in the picturesque village of Grandvaux surrounded by vineyards sliced with train tracks and backdropped with arresting views of the lake and the snow-dusted French alps. We were about to do what inhabitants of the Lavaux do best: eat lunch.