SWISS now serving Valais specialities aboard its flights

SWISS’s First and Business Class guests will be enjoying culinary delights from Heinz Rufibach, chef de cuisine at the Le Gourmet restaurant of the Alpenhof Hotel in Zermatt, from today onwards. The specialities from Canton Valais are the latest chapter in the airline’s award-winning “SWISS Taste of Switzerland” inflight foodservice concept.

SWISS First and SWISS Business travellers on intercontinental flights from Switzerland and selected inbound services will be enjoying delicacies from Switzerland’s Canton Valais for the next three months. The meals, which have been created by leading Zermatt-based chef Heinz Rufibach, will also be served to Business Class travellers on longer outbound European flights.

Heinz Rufibach, who was born in 1962, has been chef de cuisine at the Le Gourmet restaurant in Zermatt’s Alpenhof Hotel since 2002. For his restaurant customers – and now his SWISS guests – Rufibach offers fresh, honest and creative cuisine which he has himself dubbed “Alpine-Mediterranean”. His skilled and varied creations have earned Le Gourmet no fewer than 14 GaultMillau points.

For the enjoyment of SWISS’s First and Business Class customers, Heinz Rufibach has specifically created a wide range of exquisite menu items using predominantly local produce. The SWISS First starters here include a turbot-porcini terrine with tandoori king prawns and a roasted quail breast with mushroom duxelle on pickled pumpkin. SWISS Business guests, meanwhile, can look forward to such delights as smoked fish terrine with eggplant caviar and gazpacho mousseline.

The main Business Class courses offer a further culinary highlight: In First Class, the main courses include roast fillet of beef with black walnuts, a Valais pâté with leeks, apples and cheese, and supreme of maize-fed chicken. The desserts include a “Gommer Tätere” (a Valais-style cream tart with coriander seeds, Tarocco blood oranges and condensed-milk ice cream) in SWISS First, and a Toblerone mousse with tangerine compot and liquorice sauce for SWISS Business guests.

The exquisite meals are rounded off by an exclusive selection of wines from Switzerland and farther afield. Heinz Rufibach particularly recommends the characterful Valais wines on offer, which include a Cuvée Madame Rosmarie Mathier AOCV 2008 and a Cornalin AOC Valais 2007 in First Class, and a Humagne Blanche Valais AOC 2007 and a Le Tourmentin Valais AOC 2006 in Business Class.

The Le Gourmet restaurant of Zermatt’s Alpenhof Hotel is the 27th stop on SWISS’s current tour of the country’s leading kitchens under its “SWISS Taste of Switzerland” culinary concept. The programme was launched in 2002 and has already earned the inflight catering industry’s Mercury Award for its innovative approach.