Restaurant Sternen, Elfingen, Aargau

Once in a while the Tagesanzeiger delivers. This time it was a fabulous piece about Rösti from Zurich’s gastro-journalistic consigliere Mr. Böni. After reading the piece, I knew I had to go to the Sternen for dinner. A quick phone call secured a place for two and Mobility is your friend for sleek looking automobiles.

The dining room is cozy, a typical “Landgasthof” as one would expect from a restaurant called Sternen. Shoving a big fat finger in the face of these crazy inner-city trends such as “Vegan Cusisine” or “Light & healthy dining” I order a Wurst-Käse-Speck salad (sausage-cheese-bacon). It felt heavenly. The bacon added that little extra dirty meat-on-meat feeling that made this salad special.

Main course was a wild boar dish, served in two helpings and accompanied by the famed Rösti. Good meat, nice sauce – but the Rösti was truly out of this world. Super crispy, dense and flavorful on the inside – the restaurant was well worth visiting just for the Swiss national dish. Dessert was a vermicelles which had too much Kirsch for my liking. The second highlight of the outing here was that – and I kid you not – the Salvation Army showed up and sang! It felt a little bit like Christmas – surreal but (and I guess this is a testament to my aging process) heart-warming and I am now the proud owner of my own copy of “Trialog”.

And it doesn’t stop there – it seems that the donation to the Salvation Army paid off almost instantly. When driving home with the Mobility car, we got pulled over by the police due to a broken headlight I hadn’t noticed… they left us off the hook with a warning. Salvation Army, forgiving Police, Rösti, Tagesanzeiger journalists who knows his stuff and driving on backcountry roads in Aargau ? Sounds like all the elements to a perfect Christmas Story.