We arrived in Geneva on Thursday morning and have had little time to do any culinary exploration. But a quick word about our first two meals, neither of which was particularly noteworthy. Our first night we each had chicken shawarma from a stall at the Fetes de Geneve. Not spectacular. Probably a mistake to order it in a "gallette," which is or is like a Lavash flatbread or a glorified tortilla, as opposed to the pita. The vegetables simply didn't pop -- for instance, there were no tart pickled vegetables or crunchy cucumber, just some lettuce and tomato. And neither the tahini nor the hot sauce was all that remarkable. That said, there looks to be about one shawarma stand per 10 feet in our part of downtown, so further exploration of this sub-cuisine may be entailed.
On Friday night, we went exploring our new neighborhood. The wine bar we had hoped to try -- along with many other restaurants -- was closed for summer vacation, so we settled for dinner at La Bourse, a jammed cafe on the central square.
We ordered a "pot" -- read, carafe -- of the house Rose (a gamay, with none of the life, say, of a Beaujolais nouveau, but all of the youth), which was quite meh. This one had too much acidity; I could tell I wouldn't love it from its limpid white wine with food coloring appearance. I ordered the entrecote and Miss Persnick ordered the perch (supposedly from the nearby lake). The entrecote was a little too much on the medium side of medium rare and the green bearnaise-style sauce that steaks here are slathered in was heavy on the butter/grease and the herbs simply didn't jump out at me the way they should, cutting the greasiness. The perch wasn't too great either: overcooked and greasy.
Sigh.
Soon enough we'll be able to cook at home. And I'm sure we'll have some better news to report on the local eating scene once we've figured out the right places to go.
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