There's more to Switzerland than pistes: Mary Bolandwas pampered in a five-star spa resort and learned to cook with a Michelin chef. And with the current exchange rate, there's never been a better time to visit
THE SUN'S first rays needle the dawn mist above Lake Lucerne, prodding it into disarray at the feet of the snow-tipped Alps. Soon the foggy white canopy that has been sheltering the water is silently swarming, its feathered edges melting away to unveil the manicured lakeside town of Weggis in central, German-speaking Switzerland.
Mark Twain, a visitor here in 1897, didn't get to admire the sunrise from the heated outdoor pool at the five-star Park Hotel, as you can today. But he might well have been sitting on one of its balconies overlooking the lake when he described Weggis as "the charmingest place we have ever lived in for repose and restfulness".
Weggis and its surrounds, including the breathtaking city of Lucerne with its turreted buildings, quaint bridges, lake setting and Alpine backdrop, justify every preconception of Switzerland as portrayed on a million boxes of chocolates.
It's an ideal location for a summer walking or cycling trip. Nearby Mount Rigi, made famous by Turner's 1841 The Blue Rigi watercolour, stands 1,800m above sea level and offers spectacular views of the Alps, 13 lakes and the entire Swiss midlands. It has more than 100km of hiking and walking trails. Boating and waterskiing on the lake are also options.
In addition to its pool and vantage point, there are other reasons to stay at the Park Hotel Weggis. One is the heavy-duty pampering to be had after a long day's cycling or walking.
The hotel, which hosted the Brazilian soccer team in 2006, offers some of the world's most luxurious spa treatments. "Maybe we took care of them too well, given the result," smiles the hotel's manager, Peter Kämpfer.
The hotel's other great asset is 35-year-old Renée Rischmeyer, who runs his one-Michelin star kitchen for the lakeside Restaurant Annex.
Rischmeyer's focus is on blending traditional French food with Asian and other Mediterranean influences, so expect to see dishes - served on Versace tableware, no less - such as spring leek soup perfumed with lemon grass and coconut with poached guinea fowl breast; or veal fillet tartar with avocado, lime, wasabi, quail egg, potato rosti and caviar.
"It is not fusion food," he stresses. "It is French cuisine first, and then with the other influences."
After a few days of pampering I headed west to the tiny French-speaking village of Le Noirmont in Switzerland's Jura region to see one of the country's top chefs in action. Two-star Michelin chef Georges Wenger (54) has been teaching cookery for 27 years at the restaurant in his homely five-bedroom Hôtel de la Gare.
He and his German wife, Andrea, established their business next to the tiny railway station in his quiet home village (population 1,600) in 1981.
"My father was the local baker, and my two older brothers became bakers. I had to find something else to do," he says with a shrug and a smile.
Sixteen years later, his hotel became a member of the Relais & Chateaux, of the Relais Gourmand group. Wenger also travels the Jura region to local schools, sharing with the children his passion for food and encouraging them to discover for themselves the culinary treasures of the landscape.
A dozen or so foodies have come to spend the afternoon with the master. We are here to see how a truly top-notch chef goes about preparing everyday, traditional dishes, meals we can try at home. But we also want those extra insights into the stuff of Michelin stars.
In a scene startlingly, incongruously reminiscent of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, Wenger stands in the kitchen of his restaurant holding up a calf's kidney, fresh from the slaughter and still thickly encased in its own snow-white lard.
"This is one of the least fatty meats you will find," he solemnly affirms, above some barely audible rumblings of, "Ah, kidney. No thanks."
Wenger presents the solid white lump to each of us for inspection, turning it over to reveal a glimpse of the pale red meat of the organ within, quivering and bulging from its fatty casing.
"Everything that jiggles isn't fat," says Wenger. "The fat protects the meat, keeps it moist, and when you serve it you either eat the fat or you don't - some people find it has lots of flavour. But the kidney itself is very lean."
Later, as we tentatively cut into the pink flesh, still slightly rare, there remain one or two unwilling tasters.
"If Georges Wenger can't make me like kidney, then no one can," says one young Swiss woman before swallowing a forkful. The meat has been fried in most of its fat for 10 minutes, then transferred to the oven for half an hour and served with small, unpeeled onions. It is cooked in the same way in the remaining lard (nothing gets wasted in Wenger's kitchen), the lot drizzled with a vinegar, red wine, butter and shallot reduction.
The young student likes it, she says, but not enough to cook the dish herself. The class's general reaction, however, is one of genuine surprise that such an overlooked and inexpensive cut of meat could prove so tasty. The kidney is light and moist without the heavy tang in which offal dishes are often infused, the acidity of the sauce adding just the right kick and balancing out the flavours. And the fat is delicious.
The other dishes cooked over Wenger's three-hour demonstration are all doable with little fuss: white asparagus in hollandaise sauce; stuffed morel mushrooms with a port sauce; beef ragout in vinegar; pork chop with red wine reduction; blanquette of chicken; potato gratin; and chocolate mousse.
"It's all about bringing the simplicity of our ancestors back to the table," says Wenger, a staunch defender of what he calls the "sophistication of peasant cooking".
His culinary philosophy has a clear political and social edge.
"Good cooking is not all about foie gras, langoustines and truffles. That's an elitist approach. If a society is to progress, the entire society must advance, not just an elite minority."
We stand in white aprons bearing his name, pens at the ready, watching his every move, waiting for those unique manoeuvres that distinguish a Michelin-star chef from the rest. It doesn't take long. He announces that the base for the red wine reduction, to be served with the pork, has not fully "combined" - it still has some tiny grainy bits in it, which you can only see when you closely examine the sauce on the back of a spoon.
Any one of us would probably serve it up as it is, but Wenger moistens a tea towel and sieves the sauce through it, which smoothes it out and gives a glossy sheen.
"This way, when you place a piece of meat on the sauce, it's like placing a flower on a mirror, because the meat is reflected back on a shiny surface." We look at him and at each other, write it all down, but doubt we'd go to the trouble at home.
Wenger laments what he calls the gradual loss of tradition in French and Swiss cooking. He focuses on adapting traditional recipes - conjured up in times when most people worked in the fields and needed to consume up to 10,000 calories a day.
While this involves substituting heavy sauces with "foams" and lighter alternatives, using various oils instead of butter, and simply eating smaller portions, it does not mean abandoning original methods. He challenges anyone who dismisses old recipes as old-fashioned, and venerates the peasant cooks of yesteryear for their ingenuity when resources were scarce.
After the class, the soft-spoken, self-effacing Wenger (there is not even a mention of his Michelin stardom on his website) joins us for a glass of Jura wine.
"I thought it was great," says Verena Imholz, from Borex, near Geneva. "You realise there are still people who like to cook. How many young women can't cook any more? You see them bringing children to McDonald's. It's awful."
Marc Rosset, another student and an organiser of Switzerland's annual Semaine du Goût (Week of Taste) festival, has known Wenger for years and been to several classes. "What he does is what we need - so many people don't know how to cook any more."
Anything but a celebrity chef - "My voice never goes beyond this volume in the kitchen," he says quietly when asked if he resorts to Gordon Ramsay tactics - Wenger is disdainful of kitchen superstars who focus more on merchandising and shouting than on cooking, and of a general tendency to turn gastronomy into an exclusive, elitist domain. Food has become more about money and less about culture, he says.
"If you want to bring the figures up, you have to almost industrialise what you do. This goes against the artisanale approach. Culture is not a definition of money; it's a definition of values."
Go thereAer Lingus ( www.aerlingus.com) and SAS (www.flysas.com) fly from Dublin to Geneva and Zurich. Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) flies to Basel three days a week.
Basel is convenient for Le Noirmont. Zurich is the closest airport to Weggis.
What to do and where to stay when visiting the heart of Europe
Le Noirmont
• Hôtel de la Gare Georges Wenger gives public classes at least once a month at the restaurant in his Hôtel de la Gare (2 Rue de la Gare, 00-41-32-9576633, www.georges-wenger.ch). The three-hour demonstration and tasting costs 180 Swiss francs (about €110) per person.
A four-course dinner, including wines, following the class costs an additional 160 francs (about €100).
Three days a week, at lunch and dinner, he takes groups of up to six people aged under 25 and talks them through a meal, explaining everything from the local products and the flavours they produce to the origins of the cooking tradition, how to set a table and how to match food with wine. Including a full menu and wines, it costs 150 francs per person.
When booking, specify that you would like to do the class in English. The five hotel rooms are beautifully furnished, and prices for a double room, including breakfast for two, start at €214.
Weggis
The Park Hotel, Weggis
• When the weather is fine, the Park Hotel (34 Hertensteinstrasse, 00-41-41-3920505), www.weggisparkhotel.com) offers massages of every variety - from Hawaiian and Tibetan to "singing bowls" Vedic healing - outdoors on the shores of the lake. Afterwards you can reserve a private "spa cottage" with Asian-inspired wood-and-stone rooms where one person, a couple or group can enjoy a "bath" of your choice. Treatments cost from €66 for a 45-minute Tibetan massage to €94 for a one-hour "singing bowls" experience. Kanebo facials last 90 minutes and cost €122. Three hours in a spa cottage for two people, including a one-hour massage each, costs €354.
The rooms at the hotel range from very comfortable, traditional and homey to the ultra-modern Adara suites overlooking the outdoor infinity pool. The pool is heated, overlooks the lake and has Alpine views. Room rates are charged per person and exclude breakfast. They start at €147.
A seven-course menu at the hotel restaurant without wine costs 165 francs (about €100).
Chef Renée Rischmeyer gives cookery classes about twice a year. The next one is in October. He likes to get his students cooking, so everyone must roll up their sleeves and muck in.
Lugano
• Villa Principe Leopoldo.5 Via Montalbano, 00-41-91-9858855, www.leopoldohotel.com. Overlooking Lake Lugano in Switzerland's southern, Italian-speaking corner, this five-star hotel has just opened a spa. It was once home to Prince Frederic Leopold, a cavalry general of the German Hohenzollern dynasty.
The hotel is perched dramatically above the town of Lugano with the snowy peaks of Monte San Salvatore and Monte Brè as a backdrop.
For such a luxurious hotel, surprisingly decent deals can be found. One night's B&B and gourmet dinner with wines for two people costs from €470.
Nationwide
• La Semaine du Goût en Suisse00-41-21-6015803, www.gout.ch. The "Week of Taste" is an annual event that takes place this year from September 18th to 28th. Tastings and classes will be held across the country, and restaurants will offer special menus to mark the event.
A great exchange
• Switzerland has long been considered inordinately expensive, but there has never been a better value-for-money time to visit. The strong euro means a very favourable exchange rate, which brings prices into line with - and sometimes better than - those in France, Spain and Italy.