Old Town, New Market

Without providing exhausting detail, last Friday's evening concluded well. As we knew to some degree, many historic yet modern Swiss cities contain an Old Town or Altstadt neighborhood in which the charming historic architecture and streets are preserved with otherwise modern storefronts, restaurants and cafes. Zürich's Old Town is a pristine and popular example, containing the city's famous Grossmünster church and Town Hall among cobblestone streets and alleys with nostalgic names (in German) such as Butcher Street, Church Street, Market Street, and Wine Street. The current adornment of Christmas lights lends additional allure.

On Friday after Globus Bellevue, we moved slowly northward through the Aldstadt on a chilly but pleasant evening, eventually locating the Restaurant Neumarkt (New Market) on Neumarkt street for our rendezvous with a new work colleague of Steph's. Arriving too early, we instead entered an unidentified magnificent Old World-looking bar/restaurant across the street and procured the last two bar seats for another glass of wine. We observed them serving wienerschnitzel the size of your head accompanied by bright golden fries almost certainly happily prepared in animal fat.

[Note: the last time I saw fried pork tenderloins that large was at a classic hole-in-the-wall diner called Smitty's Tenderloin Shop in Des Moines, where they're almost comically served on tiny white bread hamburger buns. Iowans know a thing or two about pork and I'd highly recommend skipping breakfast and dinner the night before your next trip to Des Moines and eating lunch at Smitty's near the airport.]

We finally met Steph's work contact and her husband at Restaurant Neumarkt, one of their favorites, and enjoyed possibly our best dinner so far in Zürich; no more or less expensive than any other city or backcountry menu, the very good food inspired new hope that other great restaurants are indeed lurking nearby. Steph's contact and her husband were quite friendly, welcoming and of course, international--she was born in Hong Kong and he's a native of Paris; they met in Singapore, later married and lived in Paris prior to moving to Zürich 18 months ago for his job; they both speak English of course, and French and German to varying degrees. He attended France's renowned business school INSEAD (I had a guest professor from INSEAD at Kellogg) and had later consulted in Chicago for six months, so we chatted it up about business school, Chi-town and international soccer. He maintains the bread in Switzerland doesn't hold a candle to France's.

I'm not sure yet how interesting (or not) Steph and I are to the international set, but we'll attempt to arrange another dinner sometime and see what happens. For our part, between friendly grocery store Champagne tasters and new contacts with good restaurant knowledge, we're staying fairly entertained.