Mère Catherine — Restaurant in Zurich

I have been to Mere Catherine now 4 times. The first three were good, but the last one on Saturday 25th March at 8pm was awful. This was because of a VERY bad and rude waiter (middle-aged man, ear ring in his left ear).

We ordered snails as a starter and also two main dishes, and a bottle of wine. The waiter actually 'forgot' to submit the order for the snails, so after 45 minutes when we were both starving and asking where our food way, he then came back and said "I'm so sorry, I forgot to order your food". We were both very annoyed because we were already starving by this point. My friend, who is French, asked if we could have a glass of champagne to compensate for this failure in service, to which he seemed shocked that we would ask.

The snails eventually came and were completely dry, like lumps of dry chewy seaweed. There was no sauce to be seen, so dry were they. After we finished the snails, the main dishes then came, and my seafood platter was almost cold. I usually have zero tolerance for food arriving to my table cold, but by this time I was so hungry that I just ate it, and then afterwards informed the waiter, who did not really seem to care. I suspect that my food had been laying on the side for a while waiting for pickup, as there was only the one waiter for the entire lower floor.

To add insult to injury, the waiter brought only one glass of champagne for my friend. I asked where was mine, and he took our bottle of wine, held it up in the air, and said: "But Sir you have half a bottle of wine left, I'm not going to bring you champagne!". Unbelievable, and clearly this waiter has no knowledge of customer service or principles.

I am now seriously re-considering whether I want to ever return to this restaurant, and will be passing this story to my friends and work colleagues who also go there. When I go to a restaurant and pay almost 250chf, then this level of service is simply...

Went here for a business dinner, and while the food itself is good, the service sadly lets it down.

I started by ordering the starter of the day, which was meant to be a northern Sea crab with dill. Instead I got served with appeared to be a freshwater shrimp cocktail with dill. There was absolutely no crab in there, but ample tiny shrimps. As everyone else at the table was eating, and the waiter didn’t come back to check on us until after everyone had finished, I decided to eat it and not ask to send it back.

For the main, I ordered the Pikeperch, while my colleague ordered the seabass. When we were brought two Seabass’s, I asked them to change mine to the Pikeperch as ordered… this was done without protest, but then I got what appeared to be chicken with lobster. The rest of my table had almost finished with their main so I ate it without protest.

Dessert was luckily uneventful.

Throughout the meal, we didn’t get a smile out of the waiter or any form of checking how the meal was, which for an 800chf meal I would have thought would have been the basics.

Edit: after seeing the response, I did some googling, and think there is a translation issue. “Nordseekrabben” does NOT translate to “North Sea crab” - but shrimp. In English (as per the English menu); one...

I was blown away from the moment of entering, where I was greeted by name, and even my wish for the table had been taken into consideration.

Now for the meaty part (ha!): we had the seared beef tartare which was an interesting twist on a known dish. The main was moules mariniere and the original reason of choosing this restaurant. It’s hard to find this dish in agreeable quality in Switzerland. This was fantastic though and satisfied my longing for shellfish, at least temporarily. After the main dish we still felt like desert and picked the creme brûlée, it was very nice. The suggested dessert wine pairing was a Sauternes, at this point I was made in love with this place, its interior, menu items, drinks, etc. The Mère Catherine exceeded any of my expectations.

On top of that, the staff was absolutely fantastic in finding the right balance between discretion and checking...