Italian Comfort Food Salves Swiss Stressed Economy

THE ANNOTICO REPORT

Are the Swiss Smart or Cowards. They remained Neutral during the last two World Wars, and were not only untouched by the devastation, but profited from being a "safe harbor". 

Now the World's Banker is suffering the effects of the Banking Crises it helped create, with about a quarter of a million Swiss work in finance, in a country of 7.5 million, The largest metropolitan area is Zurich, with almost 1 million, The capital city, Bern, had a population of almost 400,000. Other large cities include Basel, Geneva, and Lausanne, all under 200,000.

In these trying times, while the Billionaires may be turned into Lesser Billionaires, or merely only Multi Millionaires, the Middle Class are being turned into Paupers by losing their Jobs, and the Value of their Homes, Pension Funds and Investments plummeting, the Swiss are turning to Italian Food that seems to be more comforting than any other. 

As Swiss Economy Goes South, Appetites Turn to Italy 

The New York Times
By John Tagliabue
June 2, 2009

ZURICH — The bankers in this Swiss financial center are struggling these days to overcome a funk.

Some Swiss banks, like the largest, UBS, have run up huge losses, forcing them to lay off thousands. Others have had profits shrink with the declining stock market.

Wealthy foreigners, like the Russians, are coming less frequently to check their anonymous bank accounts, so sales in the luxury shops along the glitzy Bahnhofstrasse are hurting. Moreover, the promise by President Obama and other Western leaders to go after tax havens, Switzerland included, has spread an unaccustomed sense of the blues.

But you would not know it over at Il Giglio, where the tables are filled six nights a week (Il Giglio is closed Sundays) even while some of Zurich’s fanciest restaurants often sit nearly idle. "We’re always full". said Vito Giglio, 52, as he leafed through his reservation book, showing how his place is booked solid for lunch and dinner, sometimes weeks in advance. "Even if they’re out of a job, they get six months’ pay and lucrative package deals", he said of his banker diners. "They keep coming in."

Yes, the bankers here are in pain, and in surprising numbers they are seeking comfort in Italian cuisine. This sudden appetite for Italian dishes seems to arise from their potency as comfort food, and the comfort factor seems to have grown in importance as Swiss banks have felt the pinch of the financial crisis.

Since the beginning of last year, when the recession began to be felt here, unemployment in the restaurant sector has climbed by more than 10 percent, said Bruno Sauter, director of the city’s labor office. But Daniel Müller, the director of gastronomy for Bindella, one of Zurich’s largest restaurant groups, said that business at Bindella’s 16 Italian restaurants has fallen by less than 2 percent since last year, and in some price segments, not at all. He said that yearly revenues rose to $100 million last year, from $90 million in 2006.

Bindella, a family-owned group, employs about 500 people in a chain that includes an exclusive restaurant called Bindella, midpriced restaurants known as Santa Lucia and a number of modestly priced restaurants called the Spaghetti Factory. Italian cuisine, Mr. Müller said, “is almost Swiss cuisine; it’s a big, integrated part of our life."

Restaurants that are not Italian are recognizing that they have to compete with Mediterranean cuisine. In an advertisement on billboards around Zurich, for example, McDonald’s shows a large juicy cheeseburger and its price, about $2.25, with the words, "Four tortellini, or this."

“Everybody has suffered to some extent," said Urs P. Roth, chief executive of the Swiss Bankers Association, gazing from his office above the Limmat River at the banking center. Mr. Roth was general counsel at UBS, when it was profitable. 

The health of banks is no academic matter, for banks are to Switzerland what lobsters are to coastal Maine. About a quarter of a million Swiss work in finance, about 40 percent of them in the Zurich area. 

Even so, in some traditional Swiss restaurants, well-known bankers have been booed out of the house; one brasserie even turned away an illustrious banker client.

While he was chairman of the board at UBS, Marcel Ospel dined regularly on Wednesday evenings at his favorite restaurant, the Kronenhalle, an old brasserie near the opera house where paintings by Matisse, Picasso and Miró adorn the walls. Yet last year, after Mr. Ospel announced that UBS had lost more than $19 billion, the Kronenhalle made him feel he was persona non grata, according to Swiss news media reports. Only recently has he begun to visit the restaurant again.

But the restaurants that are not turning the bankers away are the Italians, which have displaced the Chinese as the largest group of restaurants in the city that do not serve up Swiss dishes. Asked where he eats when he goes out, Mr. Roth of the Bankers Association replied, “If I’m with clients, I go to local restaurants around the office; if I’m alone and just want to relax, I go to Il Giglio"

Mr. Giglio, for one, is not mystified by the bankers’ sudden taste for Italian cuisine. Like another Italian specialty, it is soothing, he said: "Like the music of a tenor. For lots of music has been written for tenors; for Caruso, Pavarotti."

And yet, on a recent evening when a banker and a lawyer were complaining loudly over their pasta about their banking losses, Mr. Giglio said, a diner at a neighboring table leaped to his feet and loudly upbraided them. "He told them it was not they, the bankers, who were losing money; it was paupers like him", he said.

“Giglio’s is a place you can go to in good times and bad", said Jan A. Bielinski, 55, of Bank Julius Bar, an exclusive private bank just off the Bahnhofstrasse. "The mood has changed," he said over coffee. "The moods change when the market changes, and a bad market influences everybody." 

Mr. Müller of Bindella agrees with Mr. Giglio about the soothing factor in Italian food. Leisurely dining is fading in Switzerland, he said, where life is increasingly rushed. "Here you have the feeling of being on vacation," he said, picking at calamari and polenta at the Café Terrasse, one of his group’s newest restaurants, in a hall that once housed a striptease club. 

Even at the very top, some Italian restaurants are prospering. Over at the Savoy Baur en Ville, the exclusive five-star hotel on the Paradeplatz, the center of Zurich finance, Manfred J. Hörger operates Orsini, the restaurant where the Piccatine di Vitello alla Milanese, or veal Milanese, costs a diner $47.

Mr. Hörger, 67, who has run the hotel for decades with his wife, Christina, says the most important element in Italian cooking is continuity. "A guest came in recently from Basel and said, ‘I’d like the Ravioli della Nonna,’ ” Mr. Hörger said. "And we had taken it off the menu." 

Mr. Hörger ordered it returned immediately. "What marks us is continuity," he said proudly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/europe/02swiss.html?_r=1
 
 
 

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