Dinner at the Most Expensive Restaurant in the World (or so it seems)

My last post mentioned the perks of working at my current school. Well one of the perks I haven't mentioned is the wonderful and thoughtful gifts I receive. At the end of the last school year, I was given a gift card to a very special restaurant, Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville in Crissier (near Lausanne). I was warned to make a reservation early, and that everything I could possibly want would be taken care of.

We (finally) got around to making a reservation for Saturday, January 25th (last night). We wore our best outfits, called a taxi, and started our night. I was nervous and excited all at once! We got there and presented our gift card, which was for the menu degustation. It looked something like this:

We didn't have everything on this menu and some of the items were prepared differently than listed, or we had somethings not on the menu, but we basically had: the oysters with cavier, duck foie gras, silver cardoons, whitefish, blue lobster, suckling lamb, cheese plates, and all three deserts. If you were counting, that's 9 courses, plus a snack at the beginning with champaign. We also ended up drinking a whole bottle of wine (good wine goes down easliy!), as well as tea to aide in digestion. It was SO much food. 

As for the service, we got two tours of the kitchen and met the chef. Our waiter, a man from Cuba, was chatty, friendly, and very helpful. If you got up to use the loo, your napkin was folded while you were away. If you left the room, people were waiting behind your chair to push it in as you sat down. Every new plate came with new cutlery brought on a silver trey. They even had a silver scraper to scrape all the crumbs off the table cloth after I made a mess with my bread. Oh, did I mention the freshly baked, variety of bread offered with each course? It took us 4 hours to eat everything and we nearly floated out of the restaurant at the end. 

I've taken a few pictures here. I missed the first few courses because I was embarrased to use my camera. Then a lady at the table next to us whipped out her gigantic camera. So I thought, what the heck? I know it's tacky to take food pictures, but this is probably the nicest, most expensive meal I will ever have. EVER. So really, I had to document it somehow!

My very handsome husband :)

Third course - duck paté with a surprise inside

Silver cardoons from Crissier in spiral with black truffle sauce (yum!)

Some type of delicious fish dish with more delicious things around it

Blue Lobster

Lamb? Duck? I honestly can't remember, but it came with wildberries on the side (yum!)

The cheese plate, it was really overwhelming!

My small selection of cheese, by now I was stuffed and we hadn't even started dessert.

Not the best picture, but here we are together <3

Chocolatey/coffee/nutty dessert #1

Fruity, ice cream sugary something dessert #2

A selection of even more sweet things dessert #3!

And there you have it! Should you want to spend an outrageous amount of money for an incredible meal, this is your place. The service is impeccable, the food an explosion of flavors, and the experience like none you've ever had before.