Q. Is it normal for Swiss restaurants to charge too much for poor quality food?

A. Yes, it is.

There are some older threads on the EF where the Indian food things has been done to death. I recommend you browse there if you want to know where to get good Indian food.

Having lived there for 3 and a bit years, in my opinion f you want a good quantiy & quality of food in Zug, go to

1) Han Mongolian Barbecue - next to the Ferrari / Maserati garage on Baarerstrasse. 30 CHF, all you can eat, keep taking your plate back (beat 4 plates if you can)

2) Juanito's Mexican Restaurant - again about 30 CHF per meal but my god do you get fed well

3) The chinese in the station

4) Yeah, basically that's it.

You should have tried eating there at night - usually the prices seem to double compared to any 'mittagsmenu'!

We quickly realised that an average meal in an average restaurant (outside of the mittagsmenu specials) generally represents to our mind and budget pretty crap value for money - in terms of service, and overall price paid. I also find the 1dl measures of wine (the only place in the world I've seen them muck about like this with such puny measure outside of Germany) totally joyless - and expensive.

We now opt to eat out in Switzerland extremely rarely, and, when we do we splash out on something a bit special - at least at the higher end of the market you can find good ambience, service and cuisine - plus they tend to abandon all the 1dl nonsense from the wine lists!

The rest of the time we enjoy eating out at a more basic level whenever out of the country for a fraction of the price.

The upside is, as Nil stated earlier, we're becoming better cooks year-by-year!

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I'm wondering whether the OP has had the chance to go for a chinese yet. The price of which is bound to put the 20chf into proportion!

To be fair, the chinese in Zug station is spot on, good size portions, and good value (for Switzerland, anyway)

If you're willing to take one of the ones that they have ready made at the counter, rather than order off the menu, it's about 16 CHF for a big old serving. Off the menu, more like 20 CHF.

Often, after eating out here, I think that I must be a really good cook. After I eat out in other countries, I nearly always feel glad I didn't have to cook and that we had a nice meal out.

When I had to go to hospital back in 1988 for a few weeks (cancer surgery) I took a wide assortment of spices with me. And asked the the nice lady in charge about the matter. She asked the doctor, who gave the go-ahead for me and two other chaps in the room. And so, we enriched the food with appropriate spices, so that the stuff BECAME great indeed

I know that this restaurant isn't anywhere near Zug, but when I visited Switzerland last month a good friend of mine brought me to this restaurant in the middle Zurich, which was both relatively cheap and had great food. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restauran...le-Zurich.html The only issue with the restaurant is that you need to find your own seat. Otherwise this is great place to get a Schnitzel or Cordon Bleu at a reasonable price.

My parents ended up buying me ketchup . But even that didn't make it edible!

No, it is NOT. I mean, it IS almost normal in Switzerland, at least in urban areas to charge too much. But poor quality food in all countries is not cheaper really than good one and at worst the contrary. The story with those gigantic dishes reminded me of the Restaurant Torkel in Vaduz/FL which used to be good, until they started to serve the same meals as before in gigantic dishes at twice the price.

The only reaction to "villains" as the one described in the OP is not to go there again but try another one.

This may be in Zug, but Chinese places in the Zurich area, whenever quite many of them quite good, charge exceedingly high prices (with the exception of a number of "budget places", some of them quite good and in case of doubt even better than the "noble" ones)

And comparable to the Rheinfelder is the Johanniter
http://www.johanniter.com/

I was in the Zurich University Hospital. My mother between 2006 and 2008 was in both the Triemli Hospital and the Waid Hospital. I at times tried them meals-wise and the cuisine of also those two would have been quite nice, except lacking any spices. By what I have seen I would give rank 1 to the Unispital, rank 2 to the Waidspital and rank 3 to the Triemli (a bit bland and boring).

What "house" have YOU been guest to ?

I have to say, the Italian restaurants I've been to in Basel certainly know how to make the BEST risotto. On a recent trip back to the UK my sister was raving about a posh restaurant in Yarm - the bees knees. We went - I ordered Risotto and it just tasted like a bland plate of rice compared to the way it's done here. I didn't say anything though!

Hôpital de Prangins... maybe they think that as we have psychiatric problems we don't need feeding as well as patients with physical problems...

Or maybe it's a Suisse Romande thing, as I have the option of having meals delivered from the Hôpital de Morges (via the CMS), but I'm reliably assured the food is of a similar standard there.

Quality, quantity and value vary hugely in the UK too. Go to London, say Covent Garden, or a good pub (yes there are some!) in the Midlands- and there's no comparison.
A good Chinese restaurant in the UK is very expensive too btw.

I could not agree more. Congratulations. The first time I heard this rule, it was in France, and I was 10 years old.

I, when on visits to London, a few times tried Italian restaurants but with the exception of one in Goodge Street (the then owner now being around 90, if still alive !) they mostly were disastrous. I when in the UK went to Indian and Arab and Persian/Iranian restaurants (good food, good service). I have done so since 1972 and always got it right.

I however once went to a Vietnamese restaurant in London which was absolutely superb at fairly low prices.

A place to be recommended however, even if not for meals, is the
Texas Lone Star Restaurant
117 Queensway
London
W2 4QS

Plus

http://www.texasembassy.com/TECFood2011.pdf
a really nice place

I am a bit surprised as outside hospitals that area is known for good cuisine. Known is however that lots of Romands show meagre interest in good infrastructure ...... Back to Zurich, meals in the three public hospitals are excellently cooked but lack any spices, both in view of the fact that many patients cannot take any spicing and that many either have allergies or do not like to have anything spicy.