A culinary fairytale

It is often said there are those who eat to live and those who live to eat. But, for some of us, there’s a third category: we who travel to eat. Not for the tourist sights, the golden beaches or the mountain hikes, but for the thrill of the dining. We make restaurant reservations before we book flights and choose cities, towns, and regions based on their culinary appeal before all else. The beauty of this is that it often leads to the discovery of the most extraordinary places, such as Switzerland’s Fürstenau and its Schloss Schauenstein.

Tucked away in the folds of the Alps, in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, is a snow-dusted postcard of a village called Fürstenau, officially the smallest town in the world with city status and home to Schloss Schauenstein — the 12th-century castle that is home to chef Andreas Caminada and his three-star Michelin restaurant. It is a fairytale of a place, complete with pitched roofs sprinkled with snow, ivy-covered walls, and Caminada as its culinary Prince Charming.

It is here that, for the past 20 years, the seemingly perpetually camera-ready chef has been quietly, assuredly, revolutionising Swiss cuisine in a very real way.

Using produce primarily sourced from the region, exacting modern European techniques — with a strong focus on fermentation and preservation — and impeccable plating, he and the team pull off a spectacular dining experience. The menu switches between the seemingly simple and the complex, with each spoonful revealing a new taste, texture or, at times, even temperature.

Every dish is the embodiment of balance. It’s food that tastes of where you are — of the castle gardens, of the farm across the way, of the rivers that wind their way along the foothills of the Alps.

There’s the radish, the bittersweet, paper-thin layers accompanied by the peppery intensity of shiso. It’s a dish of admirable earthiness and freshness, with much coming from the chef’s impressive preservation cellar, which stretches this humble root through the seasons.

A dish of celery, chanterelle, and brown butter is another showstopper — again, it’s food that you can tell was grown not so far from here. There’s the creamy yoghurt, the cold sorbet, the tangy pickled mushroom, and the bitterness of celery. While rich and decadent, it remains perfectly balanced, as the chef masterfully weaves acidity through the components.

So, the menu continues, dish after dish, be it the tortellini of veal or the glorious sweetbread with pumpkin and vine leaf — an exercise in elegance, flavour, and balance, telling a tale of the region and all it holds.

The experience is enhanced by a wine pairing that, much like the menu, predominantly comprises regional wines, along with the magnificent interiors of the multiple rooms in which dinner takes place, where the aesthetic merges the historical spaces with modern design.

As the evening draws to a close and you step out into the crisp night air, you realise that, while this is indeed a fairytale, it’s one where the castle is real, the prince is a chef, and the magic is served on a plate.

schauenstein.ch

From the May edition of Wanted, 2025