Eating like a king in Europe
Thanks to some fine dining, a business trip to Zurich and Hamburg doesn’t feel like hard work
Business travel is to travel what business writing is to literature: It uses all the same tools but does not create quite the same experience. Indeed, it takes practice to draw pleasure from a tightly scheduled business trip.
As the newly designated head of my law firm’s German desk (which serves clients in Germanspeaking Europe), I was sent on a tour from one end of my territory to the other: from Zurich, the financial center on the southern end, to Hamburg, Germany, the port city on the North Sea.
With the aid of my secretary, known here simply as Ms. Moneypenny, a bit of fun was not to be out of reach. It had been her doing to get me enrolled as the member of a program that rewards hotel loyalty with perks that can be enjoyed during a lull in a crowded schedule. The benefit would come to me this time in a surprising way.
I flew economy but did so on Swiss International — which is about as good as it gets. Our finance committee being thereby appeased, I took the liberty of helping expose as myth that line about how a hardworking businessperson is best housed in a respectable, points-dispensing chain hotel. My dissenting opinion: If you are frugal elsewhere, come home every night to some luxury. A bit of pampering far from home keeps any traveler in good spirits, and a positive frame of mind is the unsung but necessary component to a successful business trip.
That is why I checked in at the Baur au Lac, the signature grand hotel in the center of Zurich.
And never forget that business associates, clients and vendors always remember a treat of fine dining. That is what took a local contact and me to Le Pavillon, the gourmet restaurant at the Baur au Lac. Under the jocular, Lausanneborn chef Laurent Eperon, the restaurant has received its second Michelin star.
His food is so beautifully presented you feel embarrassed to take a knife to it. I met him at the restaurant on his return from judging a foie gras contest.
In cooking, he explained, “Memories are important. When you were a child, in the kitchen with your grandmother — the tastes” you remember, and an experience of fine dining will return the feeling to you. That, in turn, leads to his mantra: “Make what you like.”
Although it was my colleague’s birthday, we did not inform the kitchen; perhaps we were overheard because the meal ended with berries garnished with gold, the words “Happy Birthday” written on the plate in florid chocolate script.
Two other meetings in Zurich took me to Italian restaurants — Cantinetta Antinori, where I have been before and liked again this time, and Conti, where I had not yet been and which I liked even more. But for me, a visit to Zurich would be incomplete without a hot chocolate at the flagship store, cafe and restaurant of Spruengli, one of the greatest chocolate makers of the world.
Because I was meeting a Swiss, our meeting was scheduled to go from 3:15 to 3:45 — and I knew to show up early and score a precious table (reservations are not accepted at that time) because, sure enough, my colleague arrived a couple minutes ahead of plan. As for the hot chocolate: You will need to travel as far as Paris (to a place on the rue de Rivoli called “Angelina”) before finding anything comparable.
I flew from Zurich shortly after a lunch meeting, arriving at The Fontenay, my hotel in Hamburg, in time to make a dinner meeting. The Fontenay has been open just over one year. The mid-century site of what had been the InterContinental had been stripped to its skeleton and reworked as a model of au courant luxury.
I stayed for four days of perfect weather, which can make all the difference in Hamburg. The Elbe River, the twin Alster lakes and numerous canals reflect the sunlight until, well before noon, the whole town seems to sparkle in the sunshine.
Hamburg has a world-famous red-light district, St. Pauli, but the area has been experiencing a culinary awakening. With business associates, I walked past sex clubs that offer just about everything, a local woman among us remarking about them as casually as if they were bakeries.
We dined at Haebel, which serves what it terms Nordic French cuisine from a kitchen open to the dining room. The menu is fixed, and on our night it went from sophisticated dishes framed around staples, from char, through beef, to lemon cake.
On my second day, I had six business meetings — a personal best — from breakfast through a brilliant dinner at my hotel’s rooftop restaurant, Lakeside (which, under Chef Cornelius Speinle, earned a Michelin star just this year). The style here is a curiously successful mix of sweet and spicy, starting with a red cabbage macaron as an amuse bouche, on to a post-entree treat made of dill sorbet, jasmine tea and walnuts, then to a dessert that mixed white chocolate with black olives, paired with a sparkling sake.
On the other side of the Alster, the bifurcated lake that the city envelopes, I met a local colleague for an al fresco lunch on the Lime Tree Terrace — the casual restaurant of the Louis C. Jacob Hotel. We had a few minutes with the hotel’s chef, Thomas Martin, as he took a break from paperwork he needed to complete before the arrival of the 25 others who would be with him in the kitchen of the hotel’s Jacob’s Restaurant (two Michelin stars).
Lunch the next day was at a Hamburg staple, the Fischereihafen, in the harbor on the Elbe River. It is a measure of the quality of the seafood served there that, whenever I visit, I indeed order fish — something that my terrestrial preferences do not commonly encourage me to do. My grilled tuna was spot-on.
The program Ms. Moneypenny brought me into is called “The Leaders Club,” and both of my hotels participated. In Hamburg, in what was my first free moment, I finally had the chance to use a member benefit unknown to me until the afternoon before it took place. That is how, at 8:30 on my third morning, I showed up at Ruder-Club Favorite Hammonia, an Alster rowing club, for my first lesson in a racing shell.
My instructor was a patient and conscientious Dutchman named Niels Groot. Niels asked if I had brought “dry” clothing, meaning a change. I told him no, he looked at my quizzically and said, “Rowing is a water sport, you know.”
My luck held. As Niels observed, it was apparently the years of taking tame rowboats around the Lake in Central Park that gave me enough proficiency to stay upright and navigate the shell generally where I had expected it to go.
Just as Zurich would be incomplete without hot chocolate, I could not leave Hamburg without having Rote Gruetze — the signature dessert of Northern Germany. It is a mixed berry dish of nearly pudding-like consistency, served with vanilla sauce.
I took a short walk to the Fairmount Vier Jahreszeiten, a grand hotel where I had stayed in the past and where I knew there would be Rote Gruetze on demand in the Wohnhalle — the living-room-style tearoom in the lobby. I paired it with a Chinese white tea, for which the waitress gave me precise steeping instructions as she handed me an egg timer. A pianist played Cole Porter as I had my treat. And that, in short, is just how a proper business trip should end.