Chefs and Restaurants

Gstaad Palace Hotel: dining with five senses

16th June 2023

Curated by James Newlin

Dining at the Gstaad Palace Hotel offers an extraordinary experience of charm and elegance

With a pinch of sensitivity, in the environments of Gstaad Palace Hotel you can breathe the refined and now rarefied air of a legendary aristocracy. It is a period sumptuousness that surrounds you in all corners of the hotel, including the rooms where you can enjoy breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yes, even breakfast is a pleasure to be enjoyed without haste, also because one thing that makes you happy is to see yourself again in the morning and let yourself be pampered by the same maître who served you dinner the night before. But all the service is attentive, professional and above all smiling, discreet and friendly at the same time.

Gourmets are able to satisfy their desires thanks to the choices of haute cuisine which is expressed in the various restaurants of the hotel: the main one is Le Grand Restaurant and La Grande Terrasse; Le Grill, intimate and suggestive with open kitchen; La Fromagerie, a place made out of what was a bunker during the Second World War where the gold bars of the Swiss National Bank were kept, while today you can taste different types of fondue and raclette; Gildo's restaurant, named in honor of Maître Gildo Bocchini who has served and cooked at the table for 47 years and where you can appreciate the authentic and varied Italian cuisine.

To be honest, for those who want to have an experience in contact with unspoilt mountain nature, there is also the Walig Alpine Hut dating back to 1783 and renovated with great care in a conservative way. The great actor of all these gastronomic possibilities, I would say the "Deus ex machina" is the chef and culinary director Franz Faeh, originally from Gstaad, elected by the magazine Bilanz, Executive chef of 2021, who employs over 50 collaborators, including I mention the two chef patissiers, wife and husband, Laura Pedrielli and Emanuele Lucania.

All the admirable machinery, in this enchanting Palace of other times and with the most modern and elegant infrastructures of hotel hospitality, is undoubtedly due to the management and ownership of the Scherz family for generations. Returning to the kitchen, it focuses on authentic dishes proposed with the best regional ingredients, without forgetting both the charm of a mainly Italian Mediterranean diet and the exotic charm of Asian traditions. The level of catering at the Gstaad Palace Hotel goes hand in hand with the level of the most prestigious Swiss hotel tradition and is supported by the fundamental aspect of an impeccable and very cordial service, guaranteed by a crowd of maîtres and waiters led by the first maître Andrea Buschini.

I would like to mention three dishes that particularly seduced me: the perfect cooking and the exquisite flavor of the heart of the “Chateaubriand” Simmental beef tenderloin accompanied by a delicious béarnaise sauce; “Colbert” style North Sea sole garnished with maître d'hôtel butter; the Grand Marnier Soufflé with bitter chocolate and vanilla sauces, accompanied by marron glacé and cognac. Furthermore, the gourmet is delighted to see or take advantage of the professional table service by the lamp in the dining room for the most varied savory and sweet preparations, one above all the Crêpes Suzette.

As for the wines, I entrusted myself to the first sommelier Davide Campaniello with whom we found the best food-wine combinations, on the other hand with a choice of a few thousand labels it could not be otherwise, especially among Swiss, then French, Italian wines and the rest of the world, prestigious, well-known, niche, as well as some pages dedicated to Champagne. The Lobby Bar also deserves a mention with its remarkable choice of distillates for the preparation of pre-dinner or after-dinner cocktails to be sipped in the stupendous room with fireplace or in the "fumoir" with a good Cuban cigar in your fingers prepared with cutting and lighting by the expert waiter.