Monday to Friday: 11.30 am - 2.30 pm & 6.00 pm - 23.30
Restaurant Café Boy
Kochstrasse 2
8004 Zurich-District 4
.How to get there
When Jann M. Hoffmann and Stefan Iseli took over the restaurant Café Boy in 2010, expectations were high that something special would arise. Finally, the two have proved their cooking and wine expertise already in other places. I can well remember when we curiously entered the restaurant a few weeks after its opening and were treated to excellent, fresh market cuisine and exceptional wines.
Four years later, the two of them have surpassed themselves, which I learned last week. Awarded 14 Gault Millau points, guests are going to be pleasantly surprised at the even higher level. We were recommended the 3-course-Es(s)kapaden-Surprise menu, which included a glass of the Sommelier’s choice of wine with each course. We gladly agree and are presented with the amuse bouche, a fennel soup along with their home–made graved salmon on wakame salad, served with an exclusive South African sparkling wine.
We learn that the Surprise Menu is attentively varied from table to table and that Stefan provides a selection of matching wines according to each individual guest. Our three courses prove to be a triumphant combination. Firstly, a pepperoni Panna Cotta served with a smoked over beech wood duck breast on sour cream, with curry lentils and crispy black salsify. The latter has my dinner date particularly impressed as his beloved delicate sweet root vegetable is hardly found in today's kitchen.
The second course consists of a good portion of Trofie (Ligurian pasta) in a home made braised sauce with pine nuts and basil pesto and turns out to be more rustic. The accompanying wine makes us smile: Cinq! Vin da Zücchin, which on the label means ‘for the fun of it’, a salutation to show the swiss-germans’ regard for their Italian-speaking country people and vice versa.
For the final course we are served Toggenburg veal on porcini risotto with a creamy butter sauce. Hardly a light dish, but a real indulgence - like the glass of Mercouri Cava that Stefan, for us, suitably paired it with. A wine that has never been on the menu.
As far as food and drink is concerned, Café Boy has acquired a regional, personal approach at a level that is unparalleled in the area. The straightforward atmosphere, however, has not changed much. The restaurant is still rather spartanly furnished and perhaps this is also why they still attract regulars from the old days when the traditional Café Boy was a meeting place for left wing thinkers.