Zürich geht aus – a closer look

Zürich geht aus 2012

Zürich geht aus has been around the block for a couple of years and is probably the biggest food publication in Zurich. I’ve been hearing rumours or a couple of years about less than ethical practices. These are all along the lines of buying ads in the magazine or whole packages including radio spots with Belcom AG (Radio 24) will get you published, failing to do so can lead to not being featured. Now I’m in no position to verify / falsify these stories, but I decided to have a better look at the publication from a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

The lists

Firstly I scanned all the top lists which are published at the beginning of the magazine and have a slew of comments. Having the Times restaurant featured as number one the trend list is a bad joke. The category is about “regional products, contemporary dining, new ideas and surprising atmosphere” I fail to see how products like truffles, lobster or foie gras fall into the regional products space or the idea of revitalizing an old building being very suprising or new. Times is a schicki-micki restaurant with pretentious food. My choice in the Trendsetter category would have been eiter Pachacmac (or even Lola’s) finally bringing peruvian cuisine to Zurich, La Luchador with the real tacos or my favourite Clouds.

In the institution category I disagree with the individual ratings, but overall okay. We could argue that places like the Sternengrill, Johanniter or Rheinfelder would warrant a nomination ahead of something like the Santa Lucia.

I’d agree to the tables at the water section, nothing to complain.

One of my biggest beef is with naming the Pavillon (at the Baur au Lac) as the number one Gourmet place. This is neither warranted nor understandable by any culinary criterias. The Restaurant (Dolder) or Mesa both cleary outclass this establishment, but then again they don’t have a 10 page feature at the beginning of the magazine.

The good food in the countryside list is ok, nothing to complain, just like the good food in the burroughs section.

In the “view” category Clouds does take the top spot which is okay, I am missing places like the Waid or even the Uto Kulm at the Uetliberg here.

The cozy places are okay, I wouldn’t have put Grüntal on the top and also numerous Zunfthäuse and places such as the Gertrudhof or the Alpenrose come to mind.

The other weird things I’ve noticed is that in the gourmet italian category one of my personal favourites Delmonico is absent. In the more relaxed italian section I truly fail to see what the hell the Santa Lucia Wiedikon is doing there, while places like the Taverna da Angelo, the Michelangelo in Wiedikon or even the Grotto Reale are missing.

In the Japanese list I’m missing the Ooki.

I’d pretty much agree with the selection of Thai places.

A weird idea is creating a category called “colors and aromas of the far east” and calling out “vietnamese, chinese, tibetian, indian and korean cuisines”. I truly dislike Ly’s Asia and it has no place in the number two spot. This list is missing restaurants like the Chez Nhan or the Luo, it’s missing a slew of decent indian places and I truly fail to see anyone with a cambodian influence. One of my pet peeves is that in Switzerland lot of places are “asian”, which can typically comes down to an eclectic mix of different dishes. I’m assuming this is comparable to a “european” restaurant in Japan, where they would serve fondue, chorizo and british bean dishes at the same time. The category gives me a similar type of feeling.

The spanish category is a bit small, the “arabian” one even smaller. The latter gives me the impression it was invented to make sure that there is one, since it only features two restaurants. Here the Sultan Karthago or even the (not my favourite) Maison blunt, should have been called out as well.

The classic swiss soul food category is interesting since it features a couple of restaurant from out of town (eg. the Rebe in Herrliberg which is the sister restaurant of the also featured Pflugstein). Among people in Zurich I’d assum this one to be the most contentious, since every one has his or her favourite swiss soul food place.

Interesting numbers

But now it get’s more interesting if we look at it quantitatively. The alphabetical index lists roughly 2’500 restaurants in the region of Zurich (approx 30 pages with 90 addresses each) in total and to be fair this is a pretty good list as a reference and we can safely assume that this is comprehensive. I took the liberty of looking at all the ads in the magazine to determine which ones are ads for restaurants. This process took some time but it was interesting. I counted 39 printed ads for restaurants, four of them which are outside of the loosly defined Zurich region (Mallorca, Baselland, Flims, St. Moritz), leaving 35 restaurant ads which are relevant.

The total number of restaurants which are featured in of the lists is approx 200. So roughly 8 % (or 1 in 12) of the restaurants in Zurich show up in one of the lists. Crossreferencing all the restaurants which have a printed ad with the individual top lists reveals, that 19 of those restaurants are featured in one of the lists. Essentially more than half of the restaurants which have purchased an advertisment are featured in one of the top something lists. The numbers suggest that buying an add raises your odds from being featured in one of the top lists from 1:12 to 1:2. Even if you allow part of the skew being explained eg. by the fact that better restaurants make more money and have larger marketing budget, the skew still seems high.

I’ll let you be the judge wether that’s shady dealings or just a statistical anomaly. My takeaway here is pretty simple – Zürich geht aus isn’t worth much as a guide to culinary Zurich, it’s more like an industry specific phone book.