Julie R
Google
We dined at the Badestube for a special occasion and had high expectations which were unfulfilled during the evening. The room is beautiful, but has a horrible acoustic for dining as you can hear the most intimate details of neighboring guests’ conversations louder than your table guests. Part of this would be relieved if the tables were positioned differently so voices don’t project from the rounded walls and bounce off the opposite wall and also, if the restaurant is only serving 2 tables, not to position the guests opposite one another. I brought the theme up with the waiter who seemed to be familiar with the problem but not enough to have thought about it before he placed the only 4 guests that evening directly opposite us so that I could only hear their conversations and not my partner.
The amuse bouche set up what the taste would be for the evening: a soggy and flavorless celery root piece with tiny bits of pickled something and a glob of cheese. It was unremarkable at best and certainly not to the standard of 1 Michelin star. The vegi menu was just as disappointing, the only hit was the thinly sliced kohlrabi with sesame, the other courses were a big miss: cauliflower with a very salty espume followed by soggy carrots with greens. We sent back the salty course because we thought something must not be right with it, but it came back exactly the same the second time. For sure, the chef thought we were sensitive diners, so the next sauce was served with a warning from
our waiter that it was "intensely reduced” like the last one, and to try first before he poured it all over the soggy carrots, but this one “intensely” reduced sauce proved to be almost tasteless. Dessert might have been the worst course of the evening, a so-called rhubarb sandwich which should have been a red flag. It was literally a thinly sliced toasted broiche napoleon with marinated sour and acidic rhubarb topped with an even more sour and acidic calamansi sorbet. It was so over the top acidic, it was a Mutprobe to eat.
If you think the standard menu is probably more tasty than the veggie, it wasn’t. My partner was also disappointed with it. I have been to the other Michelin stars in Zürich and they all could dance circles around this one, I don’t know why Sternen has a Michelin star, but since only 2 tables were booked when we were there, perhaps they should reconsider their concept. The normal restaurant in house sounded like it was full. The wine list was nice and the only positive about point about the evening, unfortunately. It was a very unfortunate loss of over 400 francs for this sad culinary evening.
