Basel Restaurants

Eating out here, as anywhere in Switzerland, can be a costly delight, and top-of-the-range restaurants are plentiful. Stucki Bruderholz, a landmark establishment, has been renovated and remains the "in" place for gourmets, especially with its new trendy lady chef. Zum Goldenen Sternen and Teufelhof never go out of fashion with their mouth-watering and boundary-challenging modern French-flavored cuisine. At the other end of the scale, you will never have to go far for a German-style sausage, Italian pasta, or mouth-watering confectionary as small local restaurants and cafés can be found in practically every street you walk down. Other than the top-drawer places, Basel is, in fact, full of comfortable haunts lined with carved wood and thick with the mingled odors of cooking meat and cigar smoke. The city's down-to-earth fare owes its roots to the Germanic hordes who arrived here to rout the ancient Romans, bringing with them homely-fare like schnitzel, and Spätzli (tiny flour dumplings), all to be washed down with beer.

As for dining specialties, the proximity of the Rhine means that most Basel restaurants serve a variety of freshwater fish. If the city could claim a regional specialty, it would be salmon. (These days much of it is shipped in from elsewhere, but the Rhine variety is making a comeback.) The meaty fish is best served nach Basler Art (Basel-style), meaning in a white-wine marinade with fried onions on top. Try it with a bottle of the fruity local Riesling-Sylvaner.

Asian fusion restaurants are newly popular, but these tend to come and go as do theme restaurants like the new Das Neue Rialto, which sells food and the designer furniture you sit on to eat it. This is a great concept in a city renowned for its art-filled atmosphere and, after all, this is Switzerland, where anything you sit on or see that takes your fancy you should be able to order to go, no?

For a satisfying and pocket-friendly lunch, supermarket canteens and many of the small local restaurants offer lunch specials (Tagesmenu). These are often a dish of the day accompanied by a starter or salad and maybe even a dessert and are the best way to eat well on a budget.

More and more restaurants are becoming smoke-free, while others have no-smoking sections. These no-smoking sections, however, often seem to have been randomly selected and the smell of smoke still pervades within (children's eating and play sections in supermarket restaurants often seem to be placed next to the smokers section for some bizarre reason).