PopUp Restaurant Kulinarium, Secret Location, Zurich

Finally – one of my favourite chefs, Vale Fritz, is back, up to something new and it’s pretty exciting. I’ve always complained about the lack of popup restaurants in Zurich and here he is running one. It’s in a secret location somewhere in Zurich and the deal is pretty simple, you signup through an email adress hunger@valefritz.ch should you be interested. Vale’s HSG training clearly comes through since the overarching thought is 2+2 = 5, which I’m, sure is somewhere in Jean-Paul Thommen’s book in the subsection on synergies. That’s total rubbish but it sounded good, he’s trying to convey the message that he’s trying to research new culinary approaches. If I were female, this would be one of those online dating adverts, I’d be replying with a photoshopped picture of myself.

I called out to my beloved readers if anyone were interested in joining, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of feedback I had received. I would like to apologize to all the ones that I didn’t reply, I just got too many emails. Unlike Justin Bieber I have no one to handle my electronic communications and have to do everything myself. So after a dilligent, thoughtful and completely subjective selection process I had a group of seven diners together who tagged along. Like on a first blind date, part of the excitement was meeting up in a bar without having seen each other beforehand.

To my very pleasant surprise, all seven were extremly attractive, uncanningly witty, with toned, muscular bodies and drank like a bunch of british sailors. What else could I have wished for ?

Like in a cold-war movie we snuck up a long staircase and knocked on a door, which opened after some moments to reveal a private appartment. It was nicely decorated and a large table was set for all of the people attending.

The menu was in true Vale fashion. Roasted bread with onion confit and chicken hearts, a mango gazpacho, homemade pasta with cold tomato sauce and eggplant, fish soup with loup de mer and pike, chicken skewers with hoisin sauce and scallion, pata negra, bacon roll in a bacon reduction, british cheese, dried and moist chocolate sponge with bananas and thyme-lime curd and to finish cherrish, sourcream icecream and toast.

The thing I liked the least were the chicken skewers, they were too simplistic and clunky, they didn’t develop any exciting flavor and were lacking any elegance. The skewers were exactely what the ingredients said it would be, but nothing more.

The three things I liked best, was the mango gazpacho, combining the known refreshing qualities of the spanish soup with the lovely sweetness of the mango. This was truly an innovative and interesting way of re-designing this classic. The bacon reduction was fantastic, quite frankly the stale saying that everything is better with bacon holds true, I not only wanted to lick the plate I wanted to bite into it. The overall best dish was the last, dessert. It was simple yet of utmost elegance and had a surprise in using the toast cleverly. The twang of the cherries with the muted undertone of the sour cream ice cream were expertly paired by the toast, since this was the component that brought crunch and sweetness to the dish. Seldomly do I rave about dessert, I’ll leave that to dessertblog.ch, but this time it was the best of the whole meal.

The whole evening lastes around 4-5 hours and you’ll be charged 70 CHF plus drinks. Keeping in mind that I referred to british sailor’s drinking habits, we ended up paying 150 CHF per person and being quite drunk. The good thing is I can still refer to my 7 companions as beloved readers and am looking forward to my next outing to Vale Fritz.