Martin Göschel — Restaurant in Saanen

My apologies to Mr. Goschel for being so blunt, but —

Having rented an apartment for the winter in Gstaad, I was invited by some houseguests to Sommet. While the experience was pleasant enough, the cuisine was a casualty of trying too hard to get a Michelin star.

I’ve eaten at Michelin-starred restaurants all around the world, such as French Laundry, Benu, Eleven Madison Park, Taillevent, Cheval Blanc, Odette, Otto e Mezzo. . . To varying degrees, Michelin aspirants and star awardees try too hard on “originality and difficulty”, “local ingredients”, and what I call prettification, and not enough on feeding the patron a satisfying meal.

The portions at Sommet were all minuscule and quite forgettable in taste, thanks to the insistence on produce from the region. An appetizer billed as prawns (which I guess were not from the Swiss Alps) had cut-up shrimp bits arranged in a line, equal in volume to about 1.5 penne tubes. The “4-course degustation” version one of us got had half that — 0.75 penne tube’s volume of shrimps.

Since the only main courses were a chicken with Gruyere and a beetroot something, several of us opted for a dish identified as an egg with local vegetables. It was a soft-boiled egg yolk with spinach and some kind of froth that had no taste. Mine arrived without the egg yolk. Though of course they changed it after I gently called it to their attention, you wonder how a dish revolving around egg yolk can be plated, much less leave the kitchen, much less yet get put in front of the diner, without the egg, when the entire menu had only about 8 items from starter to dessert.

Possibly, Mr. Goschel is capable of much better, but the entire Michelin philosophy needs to be reconsidered, and for the meantime diners should start voting with their wallets, or at least stop oohing and aahing over utterly tasteless yet grossly overpriced food.

The tab was about 1000 ChF for four persons, not...

Wonderful restaurant with exceptional staff who pay great attention to detail. The dishes were all outstanding & beautifully presented. Some of the best European beer on tap I have ever had & the waitress was brilliant for letting us create our own shots as we requested. All in all a great experience. I love everything aside from the porterhouse which was pure muscle no marbling lesser than a prime & even less than a choice. I do not recommend the steak otherwise everything else was perfect. The lamb was very tender and cooked just right. Anyways if you want a lovely date, dinner or night of class then definitely go here for a 4-8 course meal & even add on some extra items for a 12+ course meal. Expensive but reasonable as well & for the service it’s very worth it. Thank you staff...

Overall a very nice experience with waiters, food, wine and ambience. Great attention detail and some different taste experiences which is something you are looking for at 1* restaurant. Only disappointing element was dessert which was a chocolate fondant which essentially was not cooked! We know fondants and their texture, but this was simplify cold chocolate mixture so no idea what happened or whether it was intentional. It took 25mins to arrive so plenty of time to bake. Anyway, a very nice experience otherwise so...