Best Food in Lausanne
I am very grateful to have got to live in Lausanne for the last year and a half. There are a lot of great people who I have met, and fantastic sights. But I would be negligent not to point out
The Best Food I Ate in Lausanne
Special events: Manneke Kris waffles. Cooked fresh to order, chewy on the inside, with a nice yeasty taste and Liège-style embedded sugar bits. One was bejeweled with cheese, ham and olives at the Montreux jazz festival this year!
Street food: hot dogs from Bretzelkönig. A delicious portable trio: a pretzel-dough bun, impaled to make a hole, with mustard squirted inside, and a hot dog plopped in.
Coffee beans: Pappy John’s (who also has amazing loose tea). If you are without equipment, a fine cup can be had at P’tit Bar by the cathedral.
Best sandwiches: paninis from Monopole in Place Chauderon. The chicken paninis are made from actual chunks of real roasted chickens, not processed meat! (Pro: tasty skin, con: occassional bones.)
Best restaurant: Nandanam Indian restaurant by the train station.
Best brunch, best fondue: Café de Grancy has fantastic ambiance in a surprisingly peaceful sous-gare location. Café de l’Éveche also had a great fondue without being too greasy.
Best burger: l’Étoile Blanche if you want to sit down for a meal, The Great Escape if you want to hang outdoors on a patio with ample beer, Holy Cow for a guilty pleasure at lunch.
Best beer: Brasserie du Château is the best brewpub and has the best late night food, while Mise en Bière is the best bottle store. Satellite at EPFL is also pretty fantastic in the limited hours that they are open. Docteur Gab is a very good local brewery. I discovered Bar Tabac on my last evening, which has a great selection of Belgian beers.
Best ice cream: Veneta; I visited two of their locations, on the Ouchy pier and in the town of Gruyères. Fleur du Lait is made from the crème de la crème of crème, and they have a Swiss specialty flavour “Lackerli” which was especially good, with cinnamon and other spice flavours.
Best chocolate: Villars (see last post); for an actual restaurant in Lausanne, have spoonfuls of “hot chocolate” (chocolat chaud épais) at La Barbare.
Best bakery/patisserie: tragically my two favourite ones shut down while I was here, replaced by non-pastry stores… but Fleur de Pain is pretty good, it has locations in Ouchy, Morges, and sometimes a truck at EPFL.
Unavoidable and unforgettable: Les Brasseurs, with its metre-high columns of beer, plus Röstis and flammenkuchen of every imaginable variety. This place I will mainly miss since I got to share the offerings with many great companions… the friends make the meal here.
Click here for the map of edible Lausanne!
