Elite Traveler January-February 2016

elite traveler JAN/FEB 2016 101

other dinners; one, in collaboration with the three-Michelin-starred Gert De Mangeleer from Hertog Jan in Belgium; the second with Quique Dacosta of his eponymous three-Michelin- starred restaurant in Spain. Plus there are wine tastings, cocktail masterclasses and a final event where 11 chefs – with an impressive 22 stars between them – each serve a dish to every guest from private cooking stations. To call it exciting would be an understatement. Reflecting afterwards, Nieder recalls how he walked into the kitchen on Sunday to find 31 chefs standing there, instead of the usual nine. “It was just like a flock of chefs in white,” he says. “Everybody wanted to help. It was so busy, so

Mid-afternoon on a chilly Saturday and more than 60 bowls are lined up on a service table, while all around a gleaming kitchen young chefs are hard at work mixing sauces and rolling up canapés. Under the watchful eye of their leader, the three-Michelin-starred chef Christian Bau, the place is a hive of carefully controlled activity. Yet four hours later, it’s a different story. The kitchen is pin-drop silent except for the clinking of spoons on plates drifting in from the great dining room, just a few yards away. The dining room is painted gold with original Impressionist paintings. Inside, sophisticated diners tuck into their fourth course, while the cooking team hover around nervously.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at a top restaurant, perhaps Victor’s Gourmet-Restaurant Schloss Berg in Germany, where Bau is resident chef and has earned 19 Gault Millau points. But you’d be wrong. This is Zurich, Switzerland and the setting is not a restaurant but a food festival, albeit a pretty special one. It's the second annual Epicure Food Festival held at the five-star Dolder Grand Hotel, to which its own resident Michelin- starred chef, Heiko Nieder, himself with 18 Gault Millau points, has invited some of his European equals to cook alongside him for one night only. In addition to this feast, the festival has seen two