wisdom teeth & more switzerland

i'm not having such a fabulous week.

to start off, i accidentally deleted about 200 photos from switzerland off my computer, including the ones i snapped on the famed glacier express from st. moritz to zermatt. $@*#. as a friend pointed out, i have major issues with failing to back up data that i need to resolve. you'll just have to trust me when i say that it was the most stunning train ride ever, filled with the best train food ever. (okay that doesn't really say much.... but it was truly incredible -- beyond postcard beautiful, with alpine waterfalls, castles on cliffs, frozen streams, and chalet-studded valleys. i miss those photos).

life got even better last thursday, when i got all four wisdom teeth taken out (two of which were impacted and had to be drilled to smithereens before extraction, thankyouverymuch) and spent the following 72 hours filling my stomach with a potent cocktail of painkillers, sorbet, and mashed bananas. i've since graduated to soup and mushed-up fish.

clearly, i have no recent food photos to share. my friend has a photo of me with an ice pack wrapped around my head, but i am not posting that either for reasons you can imagine.

if this experience has taught me anything, it's that i will never take chewing for granted again. chocolate -- even the swiss kind -- isn't as delicious when i need to chip off minuscule fragments with my incisors and swallow them whole. pasta -- one of the few things i can eat -- isn't as satisfying without the mouthfeel. i've begun to daydream about goldfish crackers and pine for the crunch of crudités.

until i can have them again, i'll just carefully disinfect my gums and swallow bowls of applesauce, and drool over these pictures from a casual dinner at chez max julen in zermatt.

like many other restaurants in the town, it was decorated in what i dubbed the "alpine adorable" style.

a very multilingual menu.

fell further in love with gluhwein during this trip

pumpkin cream soup. deceptively filling.

i loved the red heidi dress. kinda want it for halloween.

schnitzel... aka really unphotogenic fare.

fish that wasn't so interesting after i filled up on mulled wine, bread, and soup

someone else's dinner sizzling away in the fire

then we took a walk, pausing by the gurgling stream, then the cemetery with its snow-covered pillows, and saw the faint outline of the matterhorn against the midnight sky, until the chill was too much to bear.

the snowcats were like glowing eyes on the mountain, thousands of meters above us, blending into the stars, rousing just as the rest of us retired. i fell asleep happy, just knowing that such enchanting places in the world exist.

the matterhorn

click on this photo!

then imagine it bigger, brisker, bluer, brighter, everywhere.

talvo by dalsass

just outside of st. moritz, there is a 17th century farmhouse that houses a magical restaurant.

inside, wooden beams glow in the light of the chandelier and tabletop candles -- a warm contrast to the icy wonderland outside. views of swiss chalets and snow-covered pines from the windows appear more like paintings. it feels like a dream, but this is real.

flush of champagne and gleam of silver. servers run to fetch an unfamiliar ingredient from the kitchen when i display any curiosity. sparkling water and wine.

flavours are combined at the hands of a genius, unexpectedly fantastic when i least expect them to be. tuna and burrata, or red mullet and pistachio, for instance, leave me wordless.

chocolate mousse impossibly dark. sorbets so intense i am reintroduced to flavours of fruits i thought i had already known. food so lovely i feel as if this is the first time i have ever truly tasted.

this was one of the nights... when i felt the ineluctible beauty of being alive.














Talvo by Dalsass **

Via Gunels 15

St. Moritz

41 81 833 44 55

http://www.talvo.ch/de/home.html

obsessed

chocolate-dipped basler läckerli from läderach. OMG. where do i procure this magical stuff in the states?!

excuse the messy unpacked room

p.s. about half my suitcase is filled with chocolate... it's very dangerous.

jetlagged

sleepless and nostalgic.

i miss the pretty pastels, the view of the tram and train station from my window, the leisurely hotel breakfasts, sprüngli as my neighbor, the light, the lake, the mountains, and so much else --

zurich

even in the rain, zurich is crazy beautiful. i miss it even before i've left.

"Arguably this is the best restaurant in Switzerland."

i just had dinner at what the ny times calls the best restaurant in switzerland.

upon taking the first bite of the lamb, my friend declared, "this place deserves the hype."

see my full review here.

dining with a view

lunch atop corviglia: pasta carbonara, salad with tofu, cappuccino and peppermint tea. happy exhaustion.

far away

a little town near klosters

nassau

1/1/12

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude."

12/31/11

if i could bottle this night into a perfume jar, there would be notes of damp earth, birthday, and monkeypod flowers redolent of childhood afternoons in beijing.