Review: Le Syracuse

(Note: if there is erratic timing between my posts, it's because of the quantity of photos I'm uploading. Accordingly, blogposts often have some delay - apologies!)

As I mentioned, last weekend my friend Tomo - an intern at CERN - came out to visit Geneva, and I got to be his pseudo-host. Both of us were relieved that we had a travel buddy for the day trip, mostly because someone else got to take photos of us for our families back home.

We decided on lunch at the Bourg de Four, the liveliest part of the Old Town here. Tomo had heard me complaining of the definitely not-stipend-worthy prices here, and then realized I was serious when I said $25 was the average price for a sit-down lunch. (Apparently CERN partially subsidizes dinners in their cafeteria, since I gave him a dirty look when he said he got steak, veggies and a dessert for $15.) We found La Syracuse, though, and promptly were charged $3 each for a shared bottle of mineral water, but to our surprise, the water was crisp, and not just because it was chilled.

Tomo ordered the prosciutto pizza ($18), while I noshed on the steak des calamari, paired with pesto linguini. Both were solid choices. The pizza was a fairly good size for its price, though it was noticeably lacking on prosciutto (Tomo would consistently redistribute the prosciutto on the pizza, saving most of it for the last two slices).

The steak des calamari, true to its name, was two small slabs of calamari, and were well-grilled - I was surprised by their size, since typically, I eat my calamari in strips (I also had the brief fear that my lunch would result in a giant deep fried steak of calamari rings, held together with breading - not unlike country steak). The tomato sauce that accompanied it was a nice touch, though a bit too thick and salty. The pesto continued the lightness of the lunch, but also could have been less salty.

The summary: a restaurant that I might repeat, for the sake of price, but given that there are so many great places out here, probably not more than once.