Loft Five, Europaallee, Zurich

Loft Five opened in Zurich’s newest property development project, the Europaallee. One can debate the name of this establishment but we’re openminded. The interior is best classified as a little bit of everything.

At first a lovely dish with a poached egg served on top of chunky mashed potatos and a curry sauce is served. Creative, simple, good products this is what good food is about. At first it felt a bit swiss-exotic but the curry sauce was a good choice and made an excellent pairing to the egg and potatoes. One can debate the green spinach leaves, but the basic intention of the dish was great.

The menu featured a dish very prominently, a tender, braised beef “Federstück”, which we think is called short rib in english. It comes with cucumber salad and terroir frites. Nevertheless the beef was dry, the sauce tacky and I had asked for cole slaw and cucumber salad but the cucumbers didn’t make it to my plate. A cole slaw should be creamier, tangier and sweeter than their version here, so it wasn’t a great side. Weird was the elaborately described terroir fries from special local potatoes which tasted just like very ordinary fries.

Overall the place has some good intentions. If you pride yourself on a special signature dish, which fails to deliver on most aspects, that seems slightly unfortunate. The place is going to full no matter what, simply for the fact that the location next to Hauptbahnhof is pretty good and it fills a void in the area.