When I first moved to Zurich
from New York City in 2012, I assumed I was leaving a diverse, multicultural city for a more staid and homogeneous one. My New Yorker friends, a cornucopia of different nationalities, races, and religious backgrounds, joked that I was trading in Gotham’s vibrant milieu for a slice of rich white Europe. But Zurich, it turns out, is not what you think. It’s only slightly less diverse than New York (37 percent of New Yorkers are foreign born, while 31 percent of Zurichers are), while a staggering 61 percent of residents are secondos (Swiss born, but with foreign-born parents), putting the city in a class like no other.
Yet its reputation as a stuffy and expensive banker city lingers. To be fair, the expensive part is true: Zurich’s cost of living is among the highest in the world, as is its denizens’ quality of life. But stuffy? That part of the equation has become less and less true over the course of my five years living here. New international ideas have slowly infiltrated the old Swiss rules, and today the city is seeing its status quo challenged on an almost daily basis.
It all started in the 1990s when Zurich’s zoning laws were liberalized, causing a boom of commercial development on the shores of Lake Zurich, in the cobbled Altstadt (Old Town), and along the banks of the three rivers that trisect the city. Neighborhoods that were once strictly residential started seeing signs of urban life. But the rezoning—paired with Zurich’s legendary low business taxes— eventually gave way to a vibrant tech sector with multinational companies like Google, Kayak, and eBay opening their flagship European branches here and drawing droves of skilled young creatives from Italy, Germany, Japan, and the United States. At the same time, Switzerland began seeing a population boom of refugees from wartorn nations—Sri Lankans, Iraqis, Balkans, and Ethiopians all came to the neutral country seeking asylum.
The rush of new residents didn’t just invigorate the city with new blood; it helped it become especially dynamic. At first, this shift created a surge in nightlife, leading Zurich to (at one point) have more bars and dance clubs per capita than any other city in Europe, most of them in Zurich West, a once down-at-the-heels industrial district that’s undergone significant urban renewal since the early 2000s. Then came more sophisticated redevelopment projects, starchitect-designed museum extensions, public art programs, and major infra---
structure upgrades, with new tram lines and expanded airports and train stations making the city more of a global hub than ever.
The dining scene in Zurich has also come of age, with a new international street-food market and a wave of vividly authentic ethnic eateries marking an end to the days when auslander (foreigner) foods were regarded with suspicion. “People in Zurich didn’t know what udon was, so it took some effort to explain how it’s different from ramen,” says Ino Oki, one of the partners of Zurich’s first iza
kaya, Ooki, which opened late last year and has been booked every night since. Another Asian-accented newcomer is Lucky Dumpling, a cozy café in Lang strasse, the city’s gentrifying red-light district, that specializes in Shanghai-style dumplings stuffed with lamb and duck.
Even gourmet dining, once the preserve of lackluster expenseaccount restaurants, has taken on new flavors. Take Mesa, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant that enhances Euro-centric classics with flavors inspired from the chef’s travels, or French-Japanese hybrid restaurant You, located on the city’s outskirts, which also got a star in 2015. And then there’s Maison Manesse, one of Zurich’s most-buzzed about dining rooms. The food here comes in the form of an avant-garde tasting menu playing up superfoods—think sliced duck with droplets of salty squid ink and Amazonian berry—but the chef, Fabian Spiquel, is Australian, which is a refreshing change for a city whose stoves were once largely manned by Swiss, French, and Germans.
Zurich’s nightlife scene is also popping. Most bars stay open until 4 a.m., while un- derground clubs thump away until the golden morning hours in sound-proofed lofts in Zurich West and on the city’s fringes. Among the most popular spots for party-goers is Helsinkiklub, a former garage run by the brother of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist and a great place to see live bands and singer-songwriters. There’s also the century-old Mascotte, which once hosted the likes of Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Armstrong but nowadays sees acts like Arcade Fire and MGMT while weekend DJs pump house and electronic until closing at 4:30 a.m.
Even more action awaits along the scruffy Langstrasse, which connects Zurich West to the rest of the city. The street is fast becoming a lab for young restaurateurs, mixologists, and baristas. New openings in just the last few months include Fat Tony, a flamboyant pizzeria-cum-bar with velvet art deco banquettes; butcher-helmed restaurant Metzg; a third-wave micro-roastery; and a craft-cocktail bar called Acid that produces its own line of gin, rum, and vodka. And soon, Langstrasse will get the city’s second 25hours Hotel (the other is in Zurich West), created by Berlin-based designer Werner Aisslinger and complete with an artist’s atelier and another outpost of Israeli chef Haya Molcho’s Neni restaurant.
Since I’m in my 40s, I gravitate more toward relaxed bars and cafés where I’ve perfected the art of the apéro— pre-dinner drinks with nibbles—that Zurichers are obsessed with. There’s no shortage of snug places to duck into for a quick quaff, like Piazza in residential Idaplatz, where the patrons say prostli (“cheers”) and en guete (“bon
appétit”) over glasses of local riesling and plates of cheese. But my favorite restaurants tend to be some of the best triedand-true bargains in town. There’s Chez Nhan, a cozy Vietnamese spot that makes a mean mi xao gion and has a lovely secret garden
of linden trees out back. Or I might grab a butterbrezel— salt-spiked pretzel bread stuffed with a slab of butter—at the Stadelmann bakery in Goldbrunnenplatz; it’s hands-down the best in town, especially when washed down with a flat white from ViCafe right next door. And for a quick bite in Old Town, I prefer the takeaway window at Brasserie Louis to the much-hyped Sternen Grill. Sternen’s wurst are okay, but the steak sandwiches at Louis are probably the spiciest you’ll find in Zurich, stacked with sautéed veggies and smothered in a zesty cream sauce and packed inside a perfectly crunchy baguette.
When out to impress, however, I take visitors to the bar at Restaurant Kronenhalle, an institution since the 1920s known as much for its classic Swiss food as for its collection of Picassos, Mirós, and Chagalls. The bar is more modern, with a svelte 1965 design from Zurich architects Trix and Robert Haussmann that remains a fabulous setting for sipping martinis with Zurich’s chic set.
Zurich’s continual development
(and redevelopment) ensures its plethora of architects and designers are kept busy. In the last five years, a wave of architectural conversions took advantage of a civic shuffle: two old breweries were repurposed, one into the Thermalbad & Spa (which comes complete with a rooftop thermal pool), and the other, in Zurich West, into Löwenbräukunst, a contemporary-art hub that’s home to some of the city’s most prestigious galleries, including Hauser & Wirth and Kunsthalle Zürich. Not to be outdone, Zurich’s iconic Kunsthaus fine-arts museum in the more genteel Altstadt area has begun work on a new annex by British architect David Chipperfield, slated for completion in 2020.
Though still gritty, Zurich West, whose factories and mills shut down with the death of local industry in the 1980s, is something of a poster-child for urban redevelopment. Some trace the area’s renaissance back to the 2000 opening of the Shiffbau, an ingenious trio of performance spaces set in a former factory that once churned out boilers and steamships. Since then, Zurich West has emerged as the most forward-looking part of town. Apart from Löwenbräukunst and the unmissable, Lego-like stack of shipping containers that is the flagship store of Swiss bag-maker Freitag, there’s Im Viadukt, a 19th-century train viaduct that now hosts a food market and retail space. Trains still zoom across the tracks above, but below, the stone railway arches are inhabited by a produce market and dozens of shops and eateries, including Zurich’s best Japanese-run udon stand (Tokyo Tapas), a British cheese vendor, a vintage clothing store, and homeware and furniture outlets. The last two years have seen new tram lines and bike lanes make the district more accessible.
Over in central Zurich, meanwhile, the city’s main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, has welcomed a weekly farmers’ market and opened an entire new lower level of shops. But the latest expansion is Europaallee, a massive complex devoted to indie boutiques and pop-ups stretching from the station all the way to Langstrasse. Tenants include haute Swiss outdoor brand Kevin in the Woods, apparel and homewares boutique Jo Brauer, and Opia, which stocks Isaac Reina bags alongside men’s wear from local designer Julian Zigerli and minimalistic jewelry by Felix Doll. Just Another Pop Up features Swiss brands like Taucherli, which produces chocolate bars spiked with Swiss malt, salt, and barley. There are new brunch spots and shops throwing open their doors seemingly every week.
“As a wealthy city, Zurich should be an idea lab for the rest of the world,” says Ralph Meury of Meury Architektur, one of the architects behind Kloten Airport’s The Circle, a US$1.1 billion retail complex and medical-tourism facility slated for completion in 2019. “We
Swiss are great at solving problems and we can afford to experiment a little bit here. If an idea can work in Zurich, it can work anywhere.”
One idea that works very well in Zurich is not a new one at all, but a longstanding tradition that helps to make this city such an agreeable place to live and visit, especially in the summer. Called
badi, these full-service swimming areas (equipped with hot showers and food and wine vendors) line the city’s rivers, canals and lakesides, softening Zurich’s austere edges. The Männerbad sits on the ancient Schanzengraben moat, flowing with clear lake water. By day, it’s male-only and sees suited UBS bankers strip for a lunchtime dip, but by evening it turns into Rimini, a splashy unisex party. The 19thcentury Frauenbad on the Limmat River in Altstadt is female-only, but at sunset it turns into Bar Fuss and lets in the men. Some, like the floating Engebadi on Lake Zurich, stay open all winter, converting to a sauna where locals regularly plunge nude into the lake. But catch it on a warm, sunny Saturday in August when a mix of skimpily dressed thirtysomethings sun themselves in view of the snow-capped Alps, and you’ll understand the pull of this unique city too.