These are the six best addresses
Well visited
Everyone who follows culinary trends is talking about vegan cuisine and natural wines. Restaurants with meat as their signature dish seem to be completely out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, the steakhouses are well frequented and advertise special cuts and dry aged beef.
Steakhouses offer more than just food. Those who reserve a table here want to go on an adventure tour, want to imitate a campfire atmosphere, feel like Old Shatterhand in the Wild West for two or three hours, like the gaucho on Argentine pastures. Meat from the grill, not too little please, with a red wine with not too little alcohol. Not everyone likes it, which is why some of Zurich’s gourmet crowd would rather chop off their hand than enter a steakhouse.
Others swear by the mostly rustic atmosphere and are happy if they can find meat to take away or a fine selection of cigars on the spot. Zurich’s steakhouses don’t have to worry about the future, especially since some of them are probably moving with the times and offering vegan alternatives for sale. What I didn’t get in any Zurich steakhouse, however: really brilliant fries.
Six Zurich addresses for good steaks
1. “Napa Grill“: the number one
If there’s a restaurant that takes the principle of meat and wine to the extreme, it’s this restaurant in the Hürlimann area. I’ve been here several times and always had to be careful not to exhaust myself. There are so many Californian specialties on the wine list that even collectors can’t get their mouths shut.
The prices of the steaks also go up quickly: “Holzen Fleisch” can still be seen, but if you want to eat a 60-day-matured porterhouse steak from the Californian cult butcher, you have to dig deep into your pockets. Insider tip: crab cake as a starter.
It seems to have always been there, the project that arose from a cooperation between the wine trade Smith & Smith and the meat producer Luma. In contrast to the “Napa Grill”, the focus is not on the USA, either in terms of meat or oenology. Of course you can have Wagyu beef (750 francs per kilogram), but they also serve what you won’t find elsewhere: for example Côte de Boeuf from Spain.
Vegetarians will likely be happy with the Green Mountain Burger. Insider tip: On the third Thursday of the month, you can taste large wines by the glass on Rare Wine Thursday.
The steakhouse in the Niederdorf exudes a bit of South American flair, which relies on dry-aged meat and gives the guest a problem getting in. As in many establishments of this gastronomic genre, the appetizers only have an alibi character.
Tomato with mozzarella, Caesar salad, empanadas. It’s better to grab the Wagyu Burger or the steaks that come from Argentina and the USA. Vegan steaks are also available, but you can skip the desserts. Insider tip: sit outside in summer!
4.”gaucho»: shop and restaurant
The concept is anything but self-evident: the guest can not only eat steaks on the spot, but also buy them to take away in the in-house shop. If you decide to stay put, you should make a reservation and realize that the menu is small compared to other steakhouses.
Good this way! Antipasti are recommended, but you’re welcome to skip fish in order to devote yourself to gaucho beef from the charcoal grill afterwards. Entrecôte or loin, rump or fillet? It doesn’t matter, because homemade chimichurri, the oily herb seasoning that can also be bought to take away, is set. Logically, white wine drinkers have a harder time here than red wine fans.
Once in Bern, twice in Zurich, always a concept that convinces: special cuts, remarkable meat quality and the opportunity to choose what you want to eat right away at the butcher’s counter. Nobody buys a pig in a poke here, you can instead choose Hanging Tender or Outside Skirt, pieces for the true connoisseur.
You are happy to accept that the menu was kept short. Actually, it’s just a matter of whether it should be salad or marrowbone first and fries or baked potatoes with the meat. After all, it has some fine wines and good champagne.
6: «meat me»: Steak, wine and cigars
When I last visited this restaurant, which opened in 2018, the wine list was still being redesigned, but this process has now been completed. It now has a few things worth recommending!
But the regular guests come primarily because of the open grill and because there are also dishes that are missing elsewhere in the industry: tuna steak, for example, or New York Club steak, matured for no less than 52 days. Insider tip: the smoking area!