17 Best Restaurants in Zürich, Switzerland

This fun, alfresco beiz (canteen) located in an upmarket lakefront campground is a sweet summer alternative to the city’s sunset terraces, which can be crowded and overpriced. Throw a sweater around your shoulders, grab a glass of rosé, and park yourself at a picnic table for vegetable crudité, bowls of truffled pommes frites, and crunchy fried fish like pike, char, perch, and trout, all line-caught in Swiss lakes.

The most ambitious of the city's many Zunfthaus dining places, this fine restaurant is also the most spectacular, with a wooden barrel-vaulted ceiling and 30-foot beams, beneath which you can enjoy such innovative entrées as home-smoked char with beetroot carpaccio, or roasted forest mushrooms with truffle cream. Slick modern improvements—including a glassed-in elevator—manage to blend intelligently with the ancient decor and old-world chandeliers. The river views are especially impressive at night; ask for a window table. The ground-floor bar also offers light lunch refreshments.

This beloved landmark has always drawn a stellar crowd, and every panel of gleaming wood wainscoting frames artworks by Braque, Chagall, Bonnard, and Rodin, collected by Gustav Zumsteg, whose mother, Hulda, owned the restaurant from 1921 until she died in 1985. The tradition is carried on by the family trust, and robust old-school cooking is still served in hefty portions: veal steak in morel sauce, duck à l'orange with red cabbage, and Spätzle, all delivered from a silver trolley. Unless you're a recognizable celebrity, make sure to insist on a table in the main dining room; ordinary mortals are otherwise seated in a less exciting room upstairs.

This bustling and spacious all-day brasserie with pinstripe room dividers and a sunny terrace has been a go-to since 1910 when it opened in Helvetiaplatz. It's versatile enough for any occasion, from a birthday party to a quiet Sunday supper. The menu is heavy on Swiss comfort classics—beef tartare with buttered toast and crispy cordon bleu oozing melted Emmental cheese, for example. Seasonal fare is never overlooked: the fall menu might include chestnut penne with mushroom cream and pumpkin risotto with port fig. Several plant-based options such as warm lentil salad with parsley roots ensure vegans won’t be stuck with pasta again.

Under painted vaults and wood-paneled walls that climb to restored century-old murals depicting gallivanting cherubs, businesspeople, workers, and shoppers share crowded tables around a stucco marble pillar to feast on generous hot dishes and a great selection of sausages. The Leberknödl (liver dumplings) are tasty, and the perch, a local specialty, is breaded and baked and comes with tartar sauce and steamed potatoes. The Öpfelküchli (fried apple slices rolled in cinnamon and sugar) are tender and sweet. The bustle and clatter provide a lively, sociable experience, and you'll more than likely get to know your neighbor.

It doesn't get more Swiss than this: the ingredients, the recipes, the wines, and the decor are all Helvetian (and though traditional, there's a youthful vibe). Enjoy seasonal dishes such as veal meat loaf with mushroom cream sauce, or organic trout with herbs and garlic; the owners' devotion to local ingredients means the menu often changes. The interior is elegantly casual, with wainscoting and etched-glass windows, linen tablecloths, a mounted chamois head, and paintings of the Matterhorn and other well-known landmarks. 

Meat is the name of the game at this deli-inspired restaurant with private booths and terrazzo floors, where grass-fed game is sourced directly from Swiss butchers and farmers. Classics include leberkäese (meat loaf), homemade pâtés, gelatinous terrines, aspics, air-cured mountain meat, and steak pies. Vegans can always expect one or two dishes on the rotating menu to keep the whole table happy.

Zürich's iconic confectionery, this landmark chocolatier and café for wealthy Bahnhofstrasse habitués concocts excellent seasonal truffles and pastries, though it's most famed for its Luxemburgerli, small cream-filled macaroon-style cookies. Good, plain hot lunches, sandwiches, and salads are also served, as are hot chocolates and coffees. There are also branches at the Hauptbahnhof, on Löwenplatz, and at Zürich airport.

One of Zürich's oldest inns, Kindli was visited by royalty in the Middle Ages, and in the centuries that followed, notable personalities were drawn by what many described as the building's "special aura." These days, the space is warm and inviting, serving seasonal variations of Swiss classics like simmered Swiss beef with horseradish and vegetables followed by caramelized apple tart. Rich, colorful paintings, dark-wood paneling, elegant bistro furnishings, and linen table settings add to the upscale, welcoming comfort of the restaurant.

Dating from 1801, and once the haunt of Zürich's beloved writer Gottfried Keller, this lively restaurant serves traditional meat dishes—Geschnetzeltes Kalbfleisch—lightened up with fresh seasonal vegetables and a champagne sauce. One section is a dark and heavily graffitied wine bar, with sagging timbers and slanting floors; there are also two welcoming little dining rooms with coffered ceilings and plenty of carved oak and damask—choose the cozy, charming Gaststube (not the more staid Stübli). It's always packed, and service can be slow, so stake out a table and plan to spend the evening. Guests who succeed in swinging around the room's famous wooden rafters three times win free wine for their table. You'd be amazed at the number of diners who make the attempt.

As soon as it even vaguely looks like it'll be warm enough, the hip deck-shoe crowd drives, runs, cycles, or even sails to one of the best places on the lake, which not only has its own dock, but is its own dock, jutting far out and offering fabulous views. The food isn't bad either: seasonal ingredients make the difference in dishes such as beef tournedos with matchstick-thin French fries, or spaghetti with lobster. Sunglasses required.

At lunchtime the line for its legendary takeout bratwurst sausages snakes out along a neighboring street, but it moves quickly because the choices are relatively limited and most choose the freshly grilled veal sausage (bratwurst) or pork-based Cervelat. Once handed your order, grab a traditional large Bürli bread roll and some in-house spicy mustard from the front counter, then sit at the Sternen Grill’s tables or wander across to the Sechseläutenplatz, with its wide-open space in front of the Opernhaus, before strolling to the lakefront. Upstairs the Sternen Grill offers sit-down service and a wider menu. A long table winding around the outside balcony provides the perfect chance for people-watching as you gaze down onto a bustling tram hub.

Right on the Niederdorf's main square, Hirschenplatz, this squeaky-clean Swiss-kitsch restaurant has an airy, modern decor, with Alpine-rustic chairs. It serves good home-cooked national specialties: Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, Rösti, Leberli, bratwurst, schnitzel, and battered fish with French fries and tartar sauce—the gang's all here. An added attraction if you're visiting in summer: fondue and raclette (melted cheese served with small potatoes in their skins, pickled pearl onions, and gherkins), usually winter dishes, are served year-round, and are available to eat indoors too. Excellent lunch menus are rock-bottom cheap and served double quick. There's outdoor seating on the cobblestone pedestrian square in warm weather.

Though its rich, carved-wood decor borrows from Graubündner Alpine culture, this dining spot is no tourist trap. There is a definite emphasis on the heavy and the meaty, but the kitchen is flexible and reasonably deft with more modern favorites as well: fillet of sole in lemon butter, chopped veal with mixed mushrooms, and delicious fruit sorbets. The house, built in 1325 and functioning as a restaurant since 1551, has always stored Italian-Swiss Valtellina wines, which were carried over the Alps to Zürich.

Built as an arsenal in 1487, this enormous stone-and-beam hall offers hearty meat platters and a variety of beers and wines in comfortable Germanic chaos. The waitstaff is harried and brisk, especially at lunchtime, when crowds are thick. Unlike the shabbier beer halls in Niederdorf, this one is clean and bourgeois, reflecting its Paradeplatz location. They're not unaccustomed to tourists—menus are posted in English, Japanese, and at least 10 other languages—but locals consider this their home away from home.

With its magnificent Renaissance-inspired facade, this airy guildhall, with whitewashed woodwork and leaded-glass windows looking out to the Fraumünster, remains an elegant place to dine on such seasonal dishes as baked pumpkin with Waldorf salad, or refined iterations of meaty Swiss classics, such as sliced veal and Rösti. The Zunft-Saal (guildhall) is a pinewood showpiece, which greatly outshines the main restaurant—a rather dull Biedermeier room. To drink in the impressive architecture, opt for outside tables on the edge of the cobblestone square in warm weather.

Dating from 1708, the buidling contains elements that go back 850 years; after a fire destroyed its top two floors in 2007, the building was painstakingly restored by specialists, who uncovered a rare fresco dating back to the 14th century in one of the small dining halls. Its main restaurant is again drawing locals and tourists alike to its fabulous dark-wood halls, now polished to an amazingly high gloss, where the focus is on traditional dishes prepared for lighter tastes, such as fried calf liver with shallots and sage.