The playful hotel that challenges Switzerland's buttoned-up reputation
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Score 9/10 The hotel is the brainchild of Michel Reybier Hospitality, a French hotel group with retreats for dreamers in other Swiss destinations such as Crans-Montana, Interlaken, Geneva and Bern, but this one has the fingerprints of Parisian designer Philippe Starck all over it. While he has a bold industrial eye, with a reputation for super-yachts as well as conceiving the private residences of the Elysée Palace in Paris, here he has used a softer touch.
Up the glass elevator — the first major sign of the transition — and past a stained glass window designed by his daughter Ara, the 40 rooms and suites are a mix of wooden floors and metal furnishings; the idea, so Starck says, was to create onshore sailors' cabins. There's an improbable reconciliation between solid brick and rattan walls, but this enhances the soft colours, mahogany and leather, anchoring the room around the private balconies and centre-of-room king-size beds, not any over-fussy furnishings. There is a fine line between fancy and fanciful and the feeling here is of classic yacht lifestyle and interiors. Compared to stuffier hotels in Zurich, it's both 21st-century and terrific. As for the open-plan bathrooms, consider a duo of stone hand basins, a freestanding tub and walk-in rainforest shower. In keeping with the overall 'in-this-together' yacht-club vibe, all rooms and suites can be combined and entire corridors can be privatised for your pleasure.
Score 9/10The main restaurant — the one-Michelin-star Eden Kitchen & Bar — is on the ground floor with on-show chef entertainment and expansive lake views, while the service is ship-shape, fuelled by a menu that sails in and out of ports all around the Mediterranean. There's saffron risotto and pink prawn carpaccio, squid carbonara, king crab tagliolino and beef tartare, a Swiss staple. It's expensive — so is everywhere in the city, mind — and the design doesn't let you forget Starck's narrative arc. Wooden hulls act as subtle decor motifs, oars hang above the marine-green tiled kitchen.
On the sixth floor and adjoining the marquee rooftop cocktail bar, is La Muña, a ceviche, gyoza and sushi bar that's draped with sailboat rigging and ropes, with every inch of the wooden attic interior telling the story of sailing through the ages. Phileas Fogg type souvenirs complete the oceangoing myth.
Breakfast also bursts with colour, texture and dishes that easily fit the nautical brief. Omelet 'Mont St Michel' de la Mere Poulard is a soufflé with black truffle. The Zuri breakfast, at least, gives the locals what they want: bacon and gruyère on potato rosti and eggs.
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Score 7/10There's a cigar lounge (if you like that sort of thing; the Swiss certainly do) and Seebad Utoquai, Zurich's finest badi or outdoor swim club, is on the lake across the road. It's not part of the hotel, but it does function as the hotel's pool, and entry and a beach bag are complimentary for guests.
Score 9/10 The DNA of the hotel is the original Eden au Lac Hotel, a Zurich lodestar since the belle époque era when it debuted in 1909. That gives the hotel an address on the waterfront that everyone knows — next to the neo-baroque Opera House and busy Bellevue plaza — with sweeping views of the lake and pine-skirted hills that everyone would like a piece of.
Price room-only doubles from £664 Restaurant mains from £36Family-friendly YAccessible Y
Mike MacEacheran was a guest of La Réserve Eden au Lac Zurich (lareserve-zurich.com)
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