Wine and Dine in the Swiss Riviera

Posted by Barbara Rogers Oct 8, 2007

This nation of lakes and mountains doesn’t have any salt-water coast, but the south-facing shore of Lake Geneva is so covered with vineyards, tile-roofed villas, palm-lined waterside promenades and tiny stone villages with steep streets that you could easily believe you were in Italy.

And although this is in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, I even found that I could sometimes be better understood speaking Italian than I was in my poor schoolgirl French. I was there to help celebrate the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation recently awarded this Swiss region, the Lavaux, and the few days I spent there were an eye-opener.

I found a lot to love – and a lot to remind me just how close this part of Switzerland is to Italy: beautiful vineyard-clad hillsides backed by lakes and mountains, Chinon Castle (previously owned by Turin’s Savoy dynasty), fine wines, and sunny warm fall weather. Even the dazzling interiors of the grand Belle Epoch hotels -- the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne and the Montreaux Palace in Montreaux -- were almost all the work of Italian craftsmen and artists.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all came while I was interviewing Philippe Rochat, the chef/owner of the three-Michelin-star restaurant Hotel de Ville just outside of Lausanne, and successor to the legendary chef Frédy Girardet.

I asked him his favorite dish and he told me it was spaghetti with white truffles (from Alba, of course). I was surprised to hear this from the foremost French/Swiss chef. Then he told me that he had learned to cook from his mother, who was from Bergamo, in the heart of the Italian Lombardy.

Italy, it seems, is never very far over the horizon from the Swiss Lavaux!