Food Zurich Festival: What to Expect

From September 8 to 18 Food Zurich, a culinary festival, will be taking place across the entire city. The event is made to bring people together to enjoy classic food and drinks, experience new culinary trends, and maybe pick up a few cooking tips. Traditional venues include restaurants, hotels, and street kitchens, but several unique locales are partaking, as well: notably, the Zurich airport, the lower levels of Zurich’s main station, and a few apartments-turned-restaurants. 

Vier & Eins: The main focus of Food Zurich. “Four & One” is a unique catering concept that will see Zurich restaurateurs transform four apartments at Swinglistrasse 18 into boutique restaurants, which together with the bar at Zwinglistrasse 10 (normally an art gallery) will be the festival’s home.

Europaallee: Guests can sit at the longest table in Zurich, where every option of brunch fare is available to them. Several restaurateurs work together to compile the menu, making sure there’s something for everyone.

Craft Beer Festival: Located at the Ziegelhütte, a brick cottage and restaurant, guests can sample over 50 craft beers – both domestic and imported – in addition to some “soul food,” all while enjoying musical performances. Guests are even allowed to take home their beer glasses as souvenirs.

Street Food Festival: Upwards of 70 alternating street food specialists serve delicacies from across the globe. Several options available are pulled-pork burgers, dumplings, ceviche, takoyaki, empanadas, tacos, truffle eggs, and strudel. 

City Dishes: Roughly 60 restaurants will be preparing their version of “chabis” (cabbage). Each year the festival has a vegetable that they ask participants to prepare, and this year the honor belongs to cabbage. The idea is one ingredient can be cooked in thousands of ways, showcasing variety within the food and the vendors.

Eat-In: With the theme “autumn has a colorful flavor,” participants learn about different foods in workshops over the course of the week. The event highlights natural ingredients that are grown, produced, and cooked in-house, while making a point to be as least wasteful as possible. At the end of the week, guests bring in one dish they prepared for everyone to enjoy.