La Vita è Bella at La Trattoria Blumenau

You’ll find tons of Italian restaurants in and around Zurich. This originates in the 50’s when Swiss companies were hiring Italian immigrants for construction work. Many of them stayed and some of them (or as it sometimes seems ALL of them) opened an Italian restaurant; often a Pizzeria, sometimes a Trattoria (see here for a detailed explanation of the differences). So if you like Italian food you have plenty of choice. Most of them serve decent food and nowadays many of them are organized in chains. This isn’t necessarly a bad thing. One of the biggest chains, Bindella, has a variety of nice and solid restaurants. Still, I prefer the “family-owned” individual restaurants. In times where you see the same H&M clothes in Switzerland, Japan, and the US, it is nice to have a meal at an individual place with waiters knowing you. One of my favorites in Zurich is the Trattoria Blumenau.

It’s close to the train station Tiefenbrunnen, on the right side of the Zurich lake. Due to its proximity to my workplace and those of my friends, I usually go there for lunch. Up until the end of October it was the little sister restaurant of the La Zagra next door, which has been awarded with 15 Gault Millau points (Gault Millau is a french restaurant guide and like the Michelin guide one of the most important and influential ones worldwide). This is a place I use for business lunches or special occasions as it is a bit more expensive. However, since November  1st, the restaurant is owned by its chef and the manager – same team and same concept, thus I don’t expect any changes in the quality.
They offer four daily menus which come with a choice of salad or soup as starter and cost between CHF 19.50-29.50. Usually you have the choice between a vegetarian dish, a pasta, a fish and a meat dish. One word about the salad: the dressing makes the salad and La Trattoria makes an excellent homemade one!

Sometimes, they have daily specials – depending on what they get on the market – as it happened on my last visit in September: homemade pasta alle vongole (Italian for delicious! …nah, just kidding; vongole = clams), which were a culinary delight and generously portioned!

If you have still room for dessert, then go for their heavenly homemade Tiramisú. They also offer outside seating (for the two weeks in Switzerland with summer weather :)). For all reasons mentioned above and because I have constantly eaten well at this place, this gem has made it to the “my usuals” list!

Trattoria Blumenau
Seefeldstrasse 269, 8008 Zürich
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 11.30am-2.30pm and 6-11.30pm