Lucerne, Switzerland, Best Restaurants and Cafes

Fine Dining and Traditional Hearty Dishes are Typically Swiss

Oct 6, 2008

Restaurants and cafes in Lucerne are plentiful and good and all serve excellent food from budget to very expensive - plus, fish fresh from the lake is a gourmet delight.

Lucerne in Central Switzerland has a range of eating and drinking venues that is second to none. It’s not all cheese either, although the diner would be foolish to miss some of the fabulous cheese dishes on offer.

Of the local specialities, the celebrated Lucerne Kugelipastete should not be missed. Old Town restaurants may spell this out in dialect, i.e. Lozärner Chögalipaschtetli, sometimes prefixed by achti (authentic). The dish resembles a huge vol-au-vent, a large puff pastry shell filled with a super-rich mix of veal and mushrooms in a creamy sauce, and is a stomach-filling, hearty meal which can usually feed two people with normal appetites.

The other local dish in Lucerne is the lake fish, cooked in so many different ways and with so many different herbs that it could have a menu all to itself. Chief among the fish are trout (forellen), perch (egli, pike (hecht) and another kind of white fish called Felchen but for which I cannot find an English translation. All of these fish you can see in the twice-weekly Old Town markets.

Restaurants in Lucerne

For self-service, the best is the EPA on Muhlenplatz which has a really good selection of nourishing food at a basic budget price.

The Old Swiss House, Lowenplatz 4. A typical Swiss-style restaurant serving typical Swiss food, including many unusual dishes.

The Stadtkeller on Sternenplatz is a folklore restaurant with everything that that implies, alphorn, yodelling and traditional dancing for tour groups. It’s perfect of its kind but if it’s not to your taste, then avoid it.

Galiker, Schützenstrasse 1, has a tavern-like setting crammed with people, noise and smoke. To offset this, they offer some of the best Swiss food in the city, especially the Chögelipastetli and a superb veal steak stuffed with Swiss cheese and ham.

Reussbad, Brüggligasse 19, is one of the best fish restaurants in the town. It is an easygoing riverside place in which the traditional cooking incorporates a range of river fish.

Château Gütsch.The white castle like building you can see from down in Luzern, the Chateau Gütsch is worth visiting if only to take tea on the terrace. The restaurant is one of Lucerne’s finest and dinner will set you back S. FR.100-plus.

And lastly, make sure you try a Kaffee Fertig, coffee laced with Schnapps, or Kafi Luz, perfect pick-me-ups for further sightseeing, or an indulgent nightcap. If you are in the Old Town or near the markets, you will see the locals drinking them.

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