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Swiss tempts its guests with Ticino food delights

10th March 2009 Print
Swiss’s First and Business Class travellers will be enjoying culinary creations by Urs Gschwend, executive chef at the Aphrodite Restaurant of the Hotel Giardino in Ascona, Southern Switzerland this month. The specialities from Canton Ticino mark the latest chapter in Swiss’s award-winning “Swiss Taste of Switzerland” inflight catering programme.

Swiss First and Swiss Business travellers on intercontinental services from Switzerland and on certain inbound flights will be enjoying the food of top chef Urs Gschwend between March and May of this year. Business Class customers on longer outbound European flights will also be sampling the new Swiss guest chef’s creations.

“My goal is to make my guests happy: do that, and the points and stars will look after themselves,” Urs Gschwend said a few years ago. He was right: having been named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ by Gault Millau for 2000 and ‘Chef of the Year’ by Bilanz business magazine four years later, Gschwend currently runs the 16-GaultMillau-point Aphrodite Restaurant at the Hotel Giardino in Ascona, Canton Ticino.

The hotel is a byword for innovation, quality and top service design – values that Swiss promotes and embodies, too.

The selections which Urs Gschwend has made for his Swiss inflight service are a celebration of Ticinese cuisine. Swiss First customers, for instance, will enjoy such tasty dishes as fillet of beef and Ticino polenta with wild garlic, merlot jus and spring vegetables. As a starter Gschwend recommends bresaola tartare on fruit crisp bread; and for dessert guests can opt for such delights as chocolate-and-vanilla lasagne with warm spiced banana, or rhubarb tiramisu with marinated strawberries and fir bud ice cream.

Swiss Business customers, meanwhile, will be offered main courses such as fillet of beef with Café de Paris butter, carrots, green asparagus and papardelle pasta, along with desserts that include a layered mousse of raspberry and lime with thyme.

The accompanying wine selection is equally appropriate. Sunny Canton Ticino has over 1 000 hectares of vineyards, and over 80% of these are devoted to the Merlot grape. Swiss’s inflight guests will be offered both red and white Merlot del Ticino. And these fine domestic wines will be supplemented by an excellent Tuscan red which is produced by Swiss couple Barbara and Martin Kronenberg-Widmer.

The Hotel Giardino’s Aphrodite Restaurant is the 24th stop on Swiss’s current tour around the country under its “Swiss Taste of Switzerland” culinary concept. The programme was launched in 2002 and has already earned the inflight catering industry’s Mercury Award for its innovative approach.