Schloss Schauenstein
Schloss Schauenstein review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin stars, 19 Gault Millau, #50 Worlds 50 Best (2019)
+Schloss Schauenstein’s remote location combines with its lengthy tasting menu to create a truly unique and memorable experience.
+Chef Andreas Caminada elevates local ingredients so his food has a sense of place and originality.
-While every dish was good there was no one dish that stood out. This is a meal that is more memorable for the totality of the experience than individual dishes.
Review Rating: 97/100
Verdict: Andreas Caminada appears to like a challenge. Rather than open his restaurant in a major city like London or Paris, he opened his restaurant in the smallest town in the world where his patrons would have to make a special trip to visit. Instead of ticking the box of your typical French tasting menu like most Michelin restaurants in Switzerland, he creates unique food using ingredients local to his region. Over the many courses of my meal, Caminada showed an immense mastery of many techniques. He often transformed the same ingredient and flavor combinations in multiples ways, creating varied taste sensations in a single course.
After dining at Schloss Schauenstein I have now been to all of the three stars in Switzerland and the standard is almost impossibly high amongst them. I probably liked the food at Cheval Blanc just a hair better but Schauenstein was the more memorable of the meals. Caminada successfully marries a remote location, local products, and world-class skill in the kitchen to create a unique experience that is rightly viewed as one of the best restaurants in Europe.
Price I Paid: 275 CHF/€245 for longest “six course” tasting menu
Value: 13/20
Schloss Schauenstein Background
Garden Sculpture
Eating at Schloss Schauenstein was one of the bigger efforts I have made to eat at a restaurant. Schauenstein is located in Fürstenau, Switzerland, a tiny town with a double-digit population near the Italian/Swiss border. The closest major city is Zurich, roughly 1.5 hours away by car but I was coming from even further away - Basel, which is about 2.5 - 3 hours away from Schauenstein. Five hours round trip might seem like a long drive to eat lunch but Michelin says a three star is worth a special journey so I figured I might as well put that rating to the test. Thankfully, Schloss Schauenstein passed it with flying colors.
The chef at Schloss Schauenstein is Andreas Caminada who trained at many Michelin star kitchens in Switzerland and Germany before deciding to open up Schloss Schauenstein in 2003. Success quickly followed, working his way up to three Michelin stars by 2010 at the tender age of 33. In addition to the success in the Michelin guide, Caminada also achieved high rankings in the Worlds 50 Best as well as 19 points in Gault Millau.
If you wondered how Caminada picked Fürstenau as the location for his restaurant he is actually from Graubünden, the Canton which Schloss Shauenstein is located in. This connection to the region shows in his cooking - many of the ingredients are local and give a good sense of connection to the area, almost justifying its off the beaten path location. Beyond showcasing local products, Caminada’s cooking shows off great technical skills, each dish well balanced and faultlessly executed. These technical skills are most often put to use serving a single ingredient in multiple preparations, creating exciting and surprising flavors and textures.
Schloss Sachauenstein only offers a tasting menu but with varying lengths from 3-6 courses with the corresponding prices ranging from 216 to 270 CHF. Three-courses may not sound like much but, as you will see when I go through the dishes, no matter how many dishes you order your meal will include many “amuse-bouches” which are really courses in their own right. Given the effort I made to visit the restaurant, I ordered the six-course menu and added the additional surprise course for 35 CHF. It was an expensive choice but a good one given how much I enjoyed Caminada’s cooking.
What I ate at Schloss Schauenstein
The meal kicked off on the restaurant’s terrace, overlooking the surrounding mountains with a handful of smaller bites. From left to right - fennel and white fish, a roll of kohlrabi and lemon, and lastly a brick roll with trout. While the flavors of these bites were not overly original, they were all well made and provided a good start to the meal.
The favorite of the terrace snacks was almonds coated in duck liver and beetroot powder. This was a really smart dish by the kitchen as they looked like chocolate-covered almonds but had a deep, complex savory flavor. The smooth foie gras also provided great textural contrast to the crunch of the almond. Last up was a dainty bit beef tartar with a beetroot ravioli on top. This again was an excellent bite, the mince on the tartar having the right texture and just the right amount of acidity brought into the dish through the use of cornichons. While each of the five snacks were not individual standouts, the overall effect of enjoying these bites outside on a warm Swiss day overlooking the mountains really got me excited for the meal to come.
I then moved into the dining room where the following dishes were nominally amuse bouches but were essentially full dishes. The first of the more substantial amuses was “Head Lettuce” and cucumber. The name of the dish, and the picture it was served with, came from a playful take on its German name “Kopfsalat” which translates to Head Lettuce. Beyond the fun name, it was a nicely balanced dish with the slight heat from jalapeños cooled off by the refreshing cucumber and lettuce components. The only complaint was that there was a tad too much of the mayo-like sauce resting under the sorbet.
The bread at Schloss Schaustein, a single loaf of potato bread, was frankly outstanding. Baked twice a day in-house and served piping hot - this is good as bread can get. I had two loaves by myself.
Next up was a dish of tomato, barbecue, and celery. This was an exciting dish as it showed how different presentations of the same ingredient can change the flavor and taste sensation. The chef is not breaking ground by combining basil and tomato but the tomatoes were of very good quality and went well with the BBQ flavors.
The next dish featured a mustard mousse enrobed in ice made of cabbage. This was designed to be a bit of a palate cleanser, the heat from the mustard clearing the sinuses and the iced cabbage meant to leave you refreshed. The use of mustard in the mousse was well-judged but the texture of the cabbage was a tad icy and the overall dish was quite salty which had me reaching for water rather than feeling refreshed. This was a bit of wizardry from the kitchen but just missed the mark.
The last amuse may have been the best, showing off many combinations of langoustine and lemon. This dish actually included three mini plates, the largest being a delicately roasted langoustine with a butter-based foam. On the side was a small shot of langoustine and stock which had a nice deep flavor. The last, and best, was a little tartar of the langoustine which highlighted the natural flavor of the fish. All three plates were excellent and it was easy to see why the kitchen has been rolling out variations of this dish since it was invented in 2008.
After all of these “amuses”, I moved into the actual courses listed on the menu. First was a piece of pike-perch with apricot and red onion. This dish was capable but just ok, the perch given only the slightest of cooks and then served with variations of apricot and onion. Pike perch was an outside-the-box choice for fish but fit with the overall theme of using local ingredients, caught from Lake Lucerne. More interesting than the main piece of fish was the small side of tartar which was served with a red onion granita as it was nice and refreshing.
Next was the surprise dish of mackerel. Mackerel is not the sexiest of fish but I tend to like it if treated carefully - which it was here. The mackerel was served lightly warmed with nice seasoning on the crust. The oily fish was well balanced out by the bite from some horseradish and Thai spice. A good example of a kitchen elevating a rather humble fish.
The meal transitioned to meat next with a dish of pork neck, dried pear, and roasted onion. This was a simple but satisfying dish with an attractive presentation - think the best bbq spare rib you have ever had. The rich fatty pork was served with a knife but I am not sure why - the meat was so tender it was hardly needed. The kitchen smartly balanced out the pork with the pear and onion, both cutting through its richness.
The next dish had a good sense of place for Schloss Schauenstein Swiss German location as it featured both char and kohlrabi, both ingredients common in the area. Char is not the most luxurious fish but I appreciated that the kitchen tried to incorporate a more local fish than something more standard like turbot. Here, the char was served with kohlrabi and tarragon which I really enjoyed as the fish was given a nice light cook. The flavor of tarragon came through in the sauce and the lightly pickled kohlrabi had a good tang.
The main course was a sublimely cooked piece of deer with pumpkin and buckthorn. This was my favorite dish of the meal, the jus very powerful and the pumpkin, which was served in many variations of flavor and textures, excellent quality. I also liked how the kitchen incorporated sea buckthorn, an ingredient that is more typically found in Scandanavia, to add a bit of acid to the dish.
The cheese course at Schloss Schauenstein was far beyond your typical cheese board at a French restaurant. First, they choose to feature many excellent local Swiss cheese in perfect condition rather than the standard assortment of French cheeses you typically find (although they offered many of those too). Next, they kicked it up a notch by also featuring a number of dried meats from local farms and various condiments. Last, they added in a simple local dish of potatoes from the Albula valley. Why more restaurants don’t put their own touch on the cheese board like this is beyond me. Just phenomenal.
Pre-dessert featured lavender and rhubarb as well as a truly glorious piece of french toast with many herbs and flowers on top. This was another strong showing from the kitchen, the dish having great floral notes.
The main dessert was labeled raspberry with yogurt and basil but really it was three desserts in one. The main plate combined various forms of raspberry and some fresh herbs with yogurt ice cream. Also served was light and airy raspberry souffle as well as a sort of yogurt mousse with a concentrated raspberry sauce. This was an impressive showing from the pasty section, the combination of raspberry and yogurt pleasing while also being very refreshing. If I was to criticize, the raspberries were not quite at the level of the ones I had at Frantzen or Louis XV.
Friandies were taken back out on the terrace and nearly as impressive as the original nibbles at the start of the meal. The extensive selection included hazelnut and chocolate, raspberry financier, a sable with nougat, chocolate-covered almonds, strawberry marshmallow, and seabuckthorn jelly. This was a really proper end to the meal as you couldn’t ask for a better afternoon than relaxing in the nice weather and enjoying these well-made treats (other than if you could drink some more reasonably priced wine with them).