Food History of Zurich

Key eras

1. 1336, the guild city

   Hans Waldmann's guild revolution in 1336 carved Zurich into thirteen craft guilds, each with a guildhall that served meals to its members. Zunfthaus zur Waag (founded 1636 in its current form, on the site of an older guild) is the canonical surviving example. Guild dining set the city's bourgeois food culture: Zuercher Geschnetzeltes, butter rosti, and the cream-sauce school of cooking grew out of these rooms.

   Taste it todayZuercher GeschnetzeltesRostiZunfthaus zur Waag

2. 1898, the vegetarian revolution

   Vegetaria Zurich opened the world's first vegetarian restaurant on Sihlstrasse in 1898 to give arthritic patients raw-food meals; the German pastry chef Ambrosius Hiltl bought it in 1904 and the Hiltl family has run it ever since. The same era saw the physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner develop Birchermuesli through nutritional experiments at his Zurichberg practice.

   Taste it todayBirchermuesli

3. 1924, the artists' table

   Hulda Zumsteg and her husband Gottlieb took over the derelict Hotel de la Couronne in 1924 and reopened it as the Kronenhalle. The Zumsteg family, particularly Gustav from 1958 onward, made the room a meeting place for James Joyce, Coco Chanel, Marc Chagall, Federico Fellini, Friedrich Duerrenmatt and a generation of artists whose canvases still line the walls.

   Taste it todayKronenhalle

4. Late 1990s, the fine-dining ascent

   From the late 1990s Zurich's Michelin density climbed: Heiko Nieder arrived at the Dolder Grand and built a kitchen that would hold two stars and 19 GaultMillau points; Stefan Heilemann took the Widder to two stars; Andreas Caminada's IGNIV opened inside the Marktgasse Hotel in 2020 with the sharing-format that changed how Switzerland books a tasting room.

Immigrant influences

Italian (Ticinese and Italian)

Italian-Swiss and Italian-Italian families opened the city's first pizzerias and trattorias from the 1950s and 60s, mostly along Langstrasse and Bahnhofstrasse.

South-Asian and Asian (Langstrasse axis)

From the 1990s the Kreis 4 Langstrasse corridor filled with Vietnamese, Thai, Korean and South-Asian counters: Lily's Original opened in 1999 with a pan-Asian menu running noodle bowls beside Pakistani curries on the same table.

Taste it todayLily's Original

Habsburg / Austrian

Boiled beef Tafelspitz, Wienerschnitzel and apple strudel crossed into Zurich's bourgeois rooms from late-19th-century Vienna and remain on the menus at Kronenhalle and Zeughauskeller a hundred years on.

Taste it todayKronenhalleZeughauskeller

Signature innovations

• Birchermuesli (Maximilian Bircher-Benner, c. 1900) - now a global breakfast
  Taste it todayBirchermuesli
• The world's first vegetarian restaurant (Haus Hiltl, 1898) - Guinness-recognised
  Taste it todayHaus Hiltl
• Luxemburgerli (Spruengli, 1950s) - Zurich's miniature macaron
  Taste it todayLuxemburgerli
• The fine-dining sharing format (IGNIV, 2020) - Caminada's table-built tasting menu