If one is in the sleepy and pristine Swiss town of Sion and asks “What’s on the menu?” at a bespoke restaurant, one doesn’t expect to be handed over an extensive list of vegetarian delicacies. But that’s what happened to me. It was a Thursday, and the GD DG restaurant of chef Damien Germanier had set aside the day for “only vegetarian dishes”. I was taken aback and even rolled my eyes a bit.

My recent visit to the beautiful Alpine country in the quest for some “non-conformist” food began on this note – startled and dismayed. But then I had a revelation that left me pleasantly amused: in the meat-and-cheese-loving nation, it was uncommon but not unheard of to order a vegetarian dish at a restaurant in Switzerland. Sitting here in Delhi and soaking in the information dished out by people on social media, we kind of — at least, it’s true for me – believe that food in a Swiss town is all about meat and all varieties of cheese. Did I miss mentioning fondue and raclette? But to my astonishment and amusement, I not only survived, but instead relished a vibrant menu of vegetarian dishes for a week as I hopped from Sion to Lausanne to Geneva, from Zurich to Basel.

Weeks after I returned home to my Delhi apartment, some of those Swiss vegetarian dishes have been replicated in my kitchen, albeit with a touch of Indian ingredients and spices. Some have even managed to creep into my weekly diet.

When chef Dominique Gauthier of Le Chat Botte, a Michelin Star restaurant overlooking the expansive Lake Geneva, served a broth of butternut and pumpkin squash with floating truffles, the result was delightful. Creamy, warm and mushroomy, it made for a perfect end to a long day of roaming along the chilly, windy and wet Geneva streets. Though the dishes at Le Chat-Botté, housed in palatial Beau Rivage Hotel, looked very exotic, most of the ingredients were sourced locally and could be found in everyday Swiss household kitchen, except the truffle.

“Swiss people in general prefer meat and cheese. But vegetarian dishes are slowly making their way in. From being a miniscule proportion in our menu, now vegetarian dishes have a notable presence in our restaurant,” says Gauthier as he dished out a eight-course vegetarian meal, ranging from fresh goat cheese ravioli with coffee (never saw that combination coming) to palate-neutral artichokes with hazelnuts.

The Swiss love their potatoes and an array of tubers – carrots, beetroots. In fact, the Swiss use carrots so much that they consume 8.5 kilos of the vegetable per capita each year, and end up importing more, according to the country’s farmer association. Leeks, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, celery, lettuce, gherkins, tomatoes, different kinds of squash, butternuts, pumpkins and a wide variety of mushrooms are mostly grown and consumed in Switzerland. Hence, these vegetables are found in their dishes, be it in the simple homemade ones or in complicated delicacies.

Coming back to Germanier’s Michelin star Sion restaurant, I picked up a dish from his kitchen — a smooth pulp made of carrot, garnished with fresh figs, and eggs (though not strictly vegetarian), cooked in a water bath. This winter, versions of this were cooked in my Delhi kitchen and they made for a perfect breakfast.

Another, a pumpkin soup that I drank a bowl of at “Alive”, a vegan cafe restaurant with chic interiors in Geneva, was also replicated in my kitchen with added lentils and some hint of lemon zest and mint.

In Basel, I picked up a nearly 400-year-old recipe for my sweet tooth. Made with just three ingredients — flour, honey and almonds – Jakob’s Basler Leckerly is not only a famous sweet treat but also worth every bite. Baked since 1753, with no tweak in the recipe of its original biscuit, its one bite is like eating a piece of history. When I brought a box of the famous biscuit to my office and offered it to my colleague, I told him: “You are eating exactly what a rich trader used to have after sailing across the Rhine on a clear sunny day as a revolution swept through neighbouring France.”

“Vegetables deserve a lot of attention as they are ethically and ecologically responsible,” says Germanier, who too sources fruits and vegetables from local farmers for his restaurant. While his restaurant uses mostly seasonal vegetables, he uses many ancestral natural preservation techniques such as lacto-fermentation to offer fruits and vegetables all year round. “When I started in the business, they used a vegetarian item as a garnish next to meat or fish. Today, I focus my cooking on vegetables, using one vegetable per dish, but in three, four or five different preparations. Alongside them, the meat or fish becomes just another element, to the point of sometimes being forgotten in some of my dishes,” he adds.

And then there is Hiltl, a renowned vegetarian restaurant in Zurich serving only vegetarian items since 1898, that include its famous Hiltl “tartare” made of aubergines, gherkins and beetroot powder and “bread meatballs” cooked in tomato sauce.

“We have Asia to thank for the fact that so many vegan and vegetarian products are available to us. Over 60 years after my grandmother brought home the first recipes and spices from India and integrated them into the Hiltl menu, many of our customers have also become accustomed to the flavours, aromas and, in particular, the great variety of vegetarian food present in Asian cuisine. This has made things much easier for us,” says Rolf Hiltl, the fourth-generation owner of the restaurant.

(The writer was on a weeklong tour of Switzerland on an invite from Swiss Tourism)