Auberge du Lion d'Or

From the menu...

Salade de poulpe (18chf)
Paillarde du porc facon du chef (28chf)
Dessert du chef (14chf)

Wine:
Pinot noir de Geneve, 2010 (32chf)

There was lots of discussion on the first night about what exactly our approach was going to be. While turning up to restaurants and ordering canettes and calzones has suited us fine in the past we came to the conclusion that such a "grand tour" was worthy of a little more culinary refinement. This conclusion was arrived at while drinking our first beer, so should of course should be seasoned to taste. For my part, I decided that wherever possible I should take at least one plate "du chef/a la maison".

This led me to try a dish unknown to me...paillarde du porc. What could it be?! Go on, guess...

Well, it turns out that paillarde is a schnitzel. Not very glamorous I admit, but a good wholesome peasant food start to the tour. I've had a lot of schnitzel during my time in Poland, but this was certainly one of the best. My guess would be that the original recipe was the chef's polish grandma's and was modified slightly by some culinary school seasoning skillz thrown into the bread-mix.

The real delight of the meal was the dessert. For some people this is true of any meal, but usually I'm more of a fatty/greasy/meaty main course kinda guy. Dessert is just punctuation. But, after a long period of indecision the waiter suggested that instead of "or" I should consider "and": dessert du chef is a selection of all the desserts. Yum!

Considering the dessert alone this place would be a solid 8 "FaceTwats" (out of 11 FTs). But, we can't eat only sweets, and so with a strong 7 FTs for baba's schnitzel and 6FTs for the pulpo (which should only ever really be served a la gallega anyways), the food score comes in at a respectable 7FTs.

The scoring system is not yet fully specified and it completely arbitrary. But, knowing the crowd, I'm sure someone will propose some Bayesian technique to re-normalize the scoring, only for someone else to do it with a maximum likelihood method. Que ludicrously long statistics argument....don't worry folks, I don't know anything about it either.

Auberge Communale de Collex-Bossy

After another unsuccessful attempt to go to the Auberge de Celigny (it was full) we are spending this evening in the Auberge Communale de Collex-Bossey. Speciality of the house is...bison!

Tonight we have some esteemed scientists from EPFL as our guests.

Pulling a Vava

For the benefit of our new readers, "Pulling a Vava" is defined as the situation where you say to your mates that you will join them for a petite soiree but then do not turn up due to one of the following reasons: 1. Having to work. 2. Going home because you have to continue working.

Auberge map

View Auberges de Geneve in a larger map

Auberge du Lion d'Or

Hold on, wait a minute, what do you mean "Ferme"? The Auberge de Celigny, and the first on the list of 43 communale auberges in Canton Geneva that we plan to visit each Thursday for the next year, is closed. The first night of "Le Tour" starts badly.

The plan was to start on the northern most commune on the rive droit and make our way anti-clockwise around the lake, taking in all the communes on the way. Celigny, being so far north that it is actually in canton Vaud, was the first up, but due to the aforementioned closure (we had to choose the one week it was closed then not call and try and make a reservation) we needed a hasty backup. Thankfully the neighboring commune (if we just ignore the little stretch of Vaud) is Versoix, home of the Auberge du Lion d'Or. Phew! Disaster averted.

Vava being Vava, pulled a Vava and didn't turn up, leaving Mario, Luigi and Peaches to enjoy our brewed aperitif while poring over the menu...

First night of the tour des auberges and it was a cracker. Filet de perche ranked a definite 9 out of 11.