Last Friday, we went to a couple friends to this place:
http://www.stefanwiesner.ch/ Watch the video and then go to the English site. He has one Michelin star and 17 Gault-Millau points. He does a modernist approach to local cuisine in this tiny village between Luzern and Bern, the back woods of Switzerland. It is about an hour drive from our house so did an arrangement where we would be driven to a farm house to spend the night.
The meal was all based on the theme "Cow on the Edge of the Woods". The chef, Stefan, came out to describe each course and his philosophy behind each course in flowery terms. Luckily we got a double sided paper with a description of what we ate at the end of he evening. I won't put everything down but to give you an idea:
The first course was served in a cow horn on a slab of juniper wood. It also came with a sieve full of hay. You were instructed to hold the sieve over a glass and they poured a beef and snow water broth over it. On that same tiny branch was a cream cheese with seeds, skim milk foam, snow flavored with juniper extract, juniper needles and salt, a chip made of blood sausage and cinnamon, wheat grass, caramelized milk, juniper molasses and pulverized milk.
Other highlights was the apple themed course, served on a piece of apple wood that had a metal tree on it with all sorts of little bits on the tree including an apple blossom sprout. Chopped beef heart on a potato-wild mushroom puree stuck all over with things like potato skins with sumac, potatoes cooked in red pine broth and some kind of fried stuff that grows on red pine all served in a hollowed out piece of red pine. In the middle of it they served a tiny chocolate cake with Jerusalem artichoke "noodles" that tasted oddly sauerkraut-like and then jumped into a course that featured veal filet that had been smoked in fermented grass then poached and glazed with bee pollen, honey and beeswax. There were also sweetbreads and veal tail filled choux pastry in that course. Dessert was an ice cream made of orange juice, orange liquor and butter on a blood orange sauce. There were also some other things made of milk and sugar beets. This was all served on a piece of slate from the old roof of the local church. And then came an amazing little cake made of white chocolate, fleur de sel and dried and ground cow milk.
After this, we were driven by one Fr. Wickey high into the mountains, up skinny windy roads to her farm house. This family has 10 milk cows, some rabbits and turkeys. They supplement their income by renting rooms. Breakfast was homemade bread, local cheese and home made jellies (which she also sells, I bought the very delicious pumpkin apple cider butter). We also woke to about a foot of fresh snow which made the trip down rather exciting. For us, Fr. Wickey was fine. We also found out that her brother-in-law is my cheese guy, which really drew us all together.
Not the best tasting food I ever had but an amazing experience. For me anyway. My husband was less enthusiastic, especially after he saw the bill (ouch).
Mary