FOOD

Best Thing I Ate All Month: Swiss Hibiscus

Reporter Andrew Schwartz shares his favorite meal from January.

By Andrew Schwartz
BTIAM Andrew Schwartz (Courtesy of Andrew Schwartz)

Name: Andrew Schwartz

Job title: News reporter

The meal: Emince zurichoise, with sides of rösti, tossed green salad and bread, and profiterole and ice cream at Swiss Hibiscus

What was so good about it: My girlfriend and I rolled into Swiss Hibiscus with our skin aglow, after taking several cycles through the new underground thermal spa The Sanctuary at the luxury hotel Cascada on Northeast Alberta Street.

I believe meals should have many escalating courses in slow succession. Here, rather than serving the entree package at once, or in some postmodern as-ready jumble, the proprietor first served the warm bread, and instructed us to put her special tangy dressing on it. Then came the salad, which had very good cheese and more of that special dressing. Then came the big papa: emince zurichoise ($28.50), a fat plate of tiny little pork splices and mushrooms doused in a thick and hearty cream, which blended beautifully into the adjacent Swiss hashbrown. By now I’d taken on a flushed buzz from my beer, which I’d consumed from one of those very tall, thin curvy glasses of the sort the Europeans like. The proprietor then sold us on a profiterole, doused in chocolate, split for two. I’m a bouncy and kinetic fellow, sometimes even a bit twitchy. At Swiss Hibiscus on this eve, I was still.

TRY IT: Swiss Hibiscus, 4950 NE 14th Ave., 503-477-9224, swisshibiscus.com. 5–8:30 pm Thursday–Sunday.

Andrew Schwartz

Andrew Schwartz

Andrew Schwartz writes about health care. He's spent years reporting on political and spiritual movements, most recently covering religion and immigration for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and before this as a freelancer covering labor and public policy for various magazines. He began his career at the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin.

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office.

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