Zurich

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I was recently at a fasting clinic in Germany for two weeks (a big post coming this spring about that!). In anticipation of it, Matt and I had the terrible (but fun) idea to treat pretty much every meal leading up to it as a “last meal.” We decided that our very last dinner should be at the Kronenhalle in Zurich—not just because it’s one of our favorite restaurants in the world, but also because Zurich is only an hour away from the clinic, and we hadn’t been to the city in quite a while. We stayed at the lovely La Reserve Eden au Lac—our first time there. The scale of the place is quite intimate, and the location is great, just next to the thick of things, but not in the middle. Our room looked out over the lake, with a sweet little balcony and a huge bathroom. There’s a lovely rooftop bar that our local friends say is super cool, and where they like to go in warmer weather.

Just a five-minute walk from our hotel, we spent a chunk of time at two places owned by dear friends, Monocle Café and Trunk Clothiers. Trunk has the best edit of men’s clothes and accessories (we got a canvas tote that we ended up using throughout the trip), and we picked up lots of great reading material at Monocle. The cafe makes great drinks (we taste-tested the Negronis one night, the coffees the next morning), and is a perfect spot to come if you want current intel on where to go in town.

Some of our favorites we discovered or revisited in our very short time there: Fabrikat was a real highlight, a very cool shop with a general store-ish vibe, for desk supplies, hooks, stationary, cleaning tools and displays of vintage ephemera. H. Schwarzenbach is a specialty food store with beautiful teas and dried fruits—it has been around over 100 years, and is still in the same family. It used to have a cafe, which has now been transformed into very well-curated chocolate store with an espresso bar. VMC has a great selection of men’s (and some women’s) clothes—mostly workwear. Antik Marangoni had a fantastic selection of Thonet. Kantorei is just next door—it’s classic Swiss food (we had a delicious leberkase with a sunnyside egg on top) with really beautiful period interiors. On the other side of the Limmat River, Matt stopped by the Davidoff store for cigars (one of the only deals to be had here), while I spent at least an hour in Spitzenhouse, a perfume and beauty shop my friend Cristina had raved about. Every time I’m with her I ask her what perfume she is wearing, and she told she’d brought back three amazing perfumes from here. When you go—and hopefully Christophe is working—you tell him what kind of scents or places you’re attracted to, and he pulls a few perfumes, all from very small makers, for you to test and narrow down. I brought home a couple of samples to see what was a fit for me—it’s that kind of place where they don’t want you to feel pressured into buying anything. Finally, we had our last meal at the Kronenhalle: martinis with friends in the beautiful bar lit by lamps made by Giacometti, a schnitzel underneath a Mirò…what more can you ask for?!