stef’s Restaurant, Rössligasse, Zürich

Waldpilz Cappucino mit Steinpilz Crostini

Kalbs-Tartar Piemonteser Art mit Sommertrüffel

Wildschweinrücken mit Herbstgemüse

Stef’s is a small restaurant which is only open in the evening, with room for about 25 diners. It’s well tucked away on the first floor of the Hotel Rössli. One guy is in the kitchen and his colleague is running the show in the dining room. The menu is short and changes every two weeks something really to my liking. We were greeted and showed to our table. Running roughly 20-25 diners on your own takes skill and experience and a couple of sturdy and swift legs. The waiter was literally running to and from the kitchen. He did ensure that we have a glass of wine to study the menu. I had issues in deciding but the menu structure helped me. You are billed per course – the first one being 45 CHF every additional one roughly 15 CHF. I started with a mushroom cappucino and a porcini crostini. The cappucino is a mushroom soup with some foam on top, hence its name. Nice taste of mushrooms and an exciting contrast of different textures made this a nice appetizer. I continued with the veal tartare and summer truffles. I didn’t care too much for it, the tastes were too subtle and too bland. In hindsight the idea of using such a fine and smooth meat for tartare doesn’t strike me as a good one. The big disappointment that went with the tartare was the bread. My dining partner guessed at Hiestand ready-bake 2000 from the gas station and she was probably right. Why not serve toast with? That’s just as easy to make and it would taste much better. I was looking forward to the main course, spaetzli, autumn veggies and a piece of wild boar. Wild boar sounds rustic, animalistic, manly – it just wakes the necessary associations which a good piece of meat should. You get the point that I was a bit excited when the plate arrived. The spaetzle were okay and the veggies were perfectly cooked. The meat was the killer. The boar meat is a dense, heavy and intense affair which was expertly matched by a rose hip (Hagebutten) sauce, which in turn made a pretty good marriage of flavours. Eating meat like this wakes an urge to father offspring in large numbers. We skipped dessert and had an espresso. The only real downside is that just one waiter is cutting it too close. There were a couple of times where we waited too long for our plates to get cleared. This will most likely improve, as apparently they are moving to the place where the Zentraleck is right now. Stef’s is a nice, chic and personal place with high quality food and above average prices:

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