LOCAL FOODS

The thing I find most surprising about the latest price survey carried out in 840 hotels around the world by Hotels.com is not that the average price of a club sandwich in Geneva is the highest in the world (€23.57), but that you’d ever dream of eating a club sandwich when you are in a foreign city in the first place.

Why would you go to Spain, for example (17th most expensive CS), or Japan (7th), or India (28th, and cheapest of all) and eat, of all things, chicken/bacon/egg/lettuce and mayo between two pieces of bread? Sure you could do that at home.

Obviously the survey is using the said sandwich as a barometer for the general level of expense you are likely to incur at your given destination. But it got me thinking about some of the countries on the list and the most memorable dining experiences I have had there.

Switzerland itself is a country I have only visited properly once – more than 30 years ago. I have no recollection of eating anywhere other than in the hotel in Wengen, and the only ‘culinary’ discovery I made was a rosti – a kind of fried grated potato cake. Not very exciting. A bit like Switzerland, really.

But what of the other countries on the club sandwich list?

Well, in Germany (14th), my most memorable meal was at the ‘posh’ end of the scale in Die Quadriga, the celebrated restaurant in the very chic Hotel Brandenburger Hof in Berlin. With something of a Nordic