T-Rex of Museum Awesomeness: the Alimentarium

Planetarium: pictures of stars on a screen.
Imaginarium: overpriced '90s educational kiddie store.

Natch, neither of these compare with the four-room beaut of a particular museum in Vevey, Switzerland.

When the woman at Vevey's tourist center told us to walk down the river until we hit a giant fork and then to turn left, Erin scoffed at the pun that went over my head. But she was right, just like any city official; lo and behold:

(The whole Vevey setup reminded me of home, actually - the fork being a low-key version of Spoonbridge and the lakeside town being the mountainous, gorgeous older sister of Wayzata.)

We turned left, and walked into the Alimentarium's garden; rows of vegetables - including corn native to three different continents - lined the walkway.

The entry foyer featured wallpaper covered in French verbs for different cooking - and eating - techniques, but the museum only had four major rooms: cooking, eating, consuming and digesting.
Cooking
Erin and I led ourselves to a kitchen where the cooks at the in-house restaurant were prepping for the days' meal (souffles for two kiddie birthday parties). Surrounding the actual working equipment were displays of pots, pans and ovens, separated by global region. We joked around about photographing the notes, because they had tips on how to properly braise meat.


On the other side of the room were smaller "artifacts" - including these jell-o molds. Yes, you can get your asparagus jell-o to look like asparagus -- this would have been an easy cheat for the Brooklyn jell-o mold contest.

Eating
Erin, always the curator, was impressed by the unique setup of the Alimentarium collection: things in the eating room were displayed non-linearly, but in a tower, with a photo of the corresponding era that the items were from.


On the other hand, I was impressed with the fake food. The whole museum reminded me of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, which has a floor that is farming themed and, more importantly, filled with fake food.

As a child, I was always fascinated with fake and miniature food: things that resembled what you ate, but whose shape (and in the '90s, scent) remained long after you had its doppelganger. I couldn't stand dollhouses, the ghostly empty eyes of dolls who were in there, but I loved their kitchens; I received a Kitchen Littles grocery set for Christmas one year - which my cousin promptly destroyed. It's a little shameful to say that I have never quite fully forgiven and forgotten this particular incident on my beloved two-inch high fake slushie machine.

In any case, I marveled at the giant food pyramid (outdated!):


and the milk 'n' honey wafers from a pharoah's tomb:


years and years later, a remnant (of bread!) from the Irish famine:


and most definitely the display that showed what a "real person" should eat, five times a day, which finally legitimized elevenses (although this picture effectively says apples, not bagels, for Brain Break).

Erin and I also regressed and played the kiddie games, which were nutritional anthropology variations of Guess Who and Go Fish.

Consuming
By far, the most photographed part of the museum; we love our processed food and took lots of photos with our preferred cravings (not all of them are here).
As an economics major, I really enjoyed checking out how payment methods for groceries changed over time.

There were nine stations, each with some interactive video or ridiculous faux phone conversation, but the real star was the walls of the consumption room, which contained plexiglas'd food items from a typical Swiss grocery store.

There was a giant chocolate cup. The photo had to be taken.

The Nestle Room
The center of the museum is actually the Nestle room, where the Nestle board met in the late 19th century; as I've previously mentioned, Henry Nestle, the founder, was born in Vevey. The conference room is filled with information about old mergers and acquisitions as well as some Nestle memorabilia. A TV is set to loop old Nestle television commercials.

I should note that Nestle is mentioned frequently in the Consuming room as well - no other company is really represented in the sample. It's clear when you look at the three displays of chocolate history in the Alimentarium; only Nesquik and its previous incarnations are seen. In this sense, the Alimentarium especially reminded me of the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis, which is covered in Pillsbury material despite attempts to represent a unified Midwest mill scene.

Digesting
The scientific part of the museum (the temporary exhibit on the top floor was about the five senses and was rather dry...it consisted of vials of phenol red and inflatable balloons that represented ear and nose cells). Lots of self-quizzes about our eating and cooking habits, and a giant hamster wheel that was, admittedly, rather hard to jog in. Digesting concluded with a 3D film, highly reminiscent of the infamous Life Sciences 1a intro - we watched ten minutes of sugar molecules disappear down animated character's esophaguses and sweep around the body.


All in all, the museum was bliss for a food lover - probably not a sophisticated foodie (but you know they'd have wanted to run the hamster wheel too). Especially good for those of us who like to know where our food's from and who like our history laced - nay, saturated - with food. For those of you thinking about visiting: without all the photo ops, the museum would probably have taken an hour and a half.

Review: Hotel les Armures

My friend Erin, who some of you may recall from her guest post on Yale d-halls, came out to Geneva for a weekend visit. Her history skillz compelled her to photograph all the Genevan fountains (free water for all!) and other ancient fixtures and signs, but I still managed to convert her into make the weekend a pseudo-culinary tour. (Pseudo, only because because I had an obligation to bring her to regular touristy things.)

Hence, the next series of posts will be reviewing our chock-full-of-food weekend - from chains to fine dining to the Alimentarium (a museum specializing in food and culture, and which I've been plotting to see ever since I've gotten here).

To begin: after Erin got here Friday night, we scrambled to get a stash of food before everything closed at 7. After a quick tour of Old Town, we wandered Bourg de Four for dinner before settling on Hotel les Armures, whose claim to fame is that diplomats and "three Democratic U.S. presidents" have stayed there. (Translated: those darn Republicans.)

Hotel des Armures is well-known for its cheese fondue, but although it was rather cold on the patio, we wanted to get some red meat into our systems for the rather lengthy day trip tomorrow. Erin chose the traditional saucisson-rosti combination (CHF 19), which consisted of a Swiss-cut sausage coupled with rosti, a round cake of shredded potato that can be compared to soft, non-crispy hash browns. I went for a house specialty, the cold roast beef with tartar sauce coupled with fries and a spring mix (CHF 24). We split a wild mushroom soup as a starter (CHF 14).

(You get CHF 1.05 for every US$1 exchanged here, so we just think about it heuristically as one-to-one.)

The mushroom soup was my favorite part of the meal, though Erin relinquished the majority of the bowl to me. As a bisque, it was neither cream-of-mushroom nor chunky broth; although the color was a bit off-putting, it tasted like mushroom sans the bitterness (I silently compared it to the mushroom tart at Porter Square's Chez Henri).



My roast beef froid was pretty good; lots of the red at the center. I usually try to steer away from tartar sauce in the States, but homemade tartar is a different story...plus there were no capers in the tartar. The chunky raw chive added to the top of the tartar made it a little more crisp. The salad was lackluster, and although shredded potato was a good idea in theory, drowning it in a creamy mayonnaise dressing and tossing it on top of the salad was not the best idea.


Fries...hmph. I'm already slightly disgruntled with fries here in Switzerland; they're too potato-y (potatoe-y looks better, but I don't want to pull a Dan Quayle just in case) and yellow colored for my McD sensibilities. To make matters worse, I asked for ketchup and was never served it, and the already-brusque service went downhill from there. Yes, I know I'm hopeless - so please, the ketchup. I can't do it with cracked black pepper, alone. (I could have done with some aioli, too.)


On the other hand, Erin's sausage was amazing. Lots of dense flavor permeated it, and the casing wasn't obnoxious. I prefer Perkins pan-fried hash browns to rosti, but that's probably just because the chewier texture is acquired.

Throwdown: go for the lunch specials at CHF 19. You can get a main plate with risotto/rosti and veggies on the side. And don't ask for the ketchup.

Yale: A Dining Hall Primer

In light of the fact that it is finals week at Harvard (but in two years, it won't be!), I asked my friend Erin, a freshman at Yale, to guest-post about the dining hall system there. As follows, her response:

After coming back from break where I heard horror stories about other colleges mealtime fare, I can say without a doubt that I hit the gastronomic jackpot in attending Yale. Our dining halls are second to none, and the options for places to eat are endless. In addition to the 12 (or rather 11, since one college is always undergoing renovations) residential colleges, which each offer their own atmosphere, there is also Commons, which has the longest hours, and the widest variety of food. For lunch, the choices are even more varied, as students can use their lunch swipe to eat in the Law School, Kline Biology Tower or School of Management.

Before I start on the residential colleges, where I eat almost all of my meals, I’ll give a brief statement about Commons. It is huge, and similar to Annenberg at “the other school.” It is the only place that serves hot breakfast during the week, with daily menus of pancakes, sausage/bacon/ham, eggs, and potatoes. I’m not much of a breakfast eater, but when I do manage to crawl out of bed before 11, it’s a good place to go. All the other residential colleges have a cold breakfast of cereal, bread, bagels, waffles, etc. One thing that is unique to Commons is the Y waffle-maker, which I have yet to try, but have heard good things. Commons also has longer hours than any other dining hall, staying open past 7. It has a pizza bar, a main line, a pasta bar, a salad bar, a sandwich bar, a dessert bar, a cereal bar, and a wide variety of drinks. There has never been a time where I haven’t been able to find something good to eat at commons. Also, Commons is a great place to see people, as it is centrally located to most classroom buildings, and many people eat lunch there.

I however am a much bigger fan of the residential college dining halls. They are much smaller, more intimate, and normally have very good food. Last night for example, at Branford, dinner was southern fried or grilled chicken, some stuffed squash thing that I’m sure vegetarians would have loved, glazed ham, garlic flavored green beans and mashed potatoes with gravy. Yale’s mashed potatoes are some of the best I’ve ever tasted, and I would like to think myself somewhat of a mashed potato aficionado. They are creamy with little bits of potato skins to give them texture, and chicken gravy is great. In addition, my friends also had spinach soup, colorful and delicious salads, various cookies, and ice cream.

Every dining hall has unique specialties that you discover as you sample different ones: Pierson has a soft-serve ice cream machine that sometimes works, Davenport has their precious gnome in the middle of their dining hall, Calhoun, much to the delight of one of my friends, has fresh pineapple, and Berkeley, the famous dining hall that is always PACKED with freshmen because the foods so good, has different tossed salads every day.

Although I’ve been in many of the dining halls, this is most likely only because my own beloved college, Jonathan Edwards, is under construction this year. Many of my other freshmen friends eat most of their meals in their own college. This is because each dining hall acts as a meeting place. By eating in your college, you are guaranteed to see people you know, and also, to meet some new people you may not have seen before. The table set-up creates a great environment for discussion, assuming there aren’t too many people, and you will often see people stop at tables talking to different friends as they walk to their seat. The dining hall workers often become close with the students, and the card swipers memorize new freshman names in their respective college, so they can greet them by name. Being in JE, this has not yet happened to me, but I hold out hope.

In addition, colleges have family meals every week in which only people in the college can use the dining hall, so as to increase the solidarity and camaraderie amongst students. Do not fear if you are sans dining hall, as JE students this year are welcome in any college, although, the food tends to be absolutely amazing on family nights (i.e. sundae bars or high class meats), thus you will be accused of stealing other college’s food.

I cannot think of one meal where I have been able to find nothing to eat. My biggest problem is that I often find one thing I like, only to realize that there’s something else that I want even more, and I end up with too much food on my tray. This is the main hazard of Yale’s all-you-can-eat policy. Many ingredients in our food come from the Yale farm, which I am told is on the edge of campus, and one of their most prolific crops is a green herb which is liberally sprinkled over many foods, including my mashed potatoes, and whose name utterly escapes me at this moment. Every meal has at least one organic entrée, which I suppose is a good thing, but I’ve never noticed a difference in the taste of food. There are always various vegetarian options, and desserts are normally amazing.

Basically, I can’t say enough good things about Yale’s dining options. Everyone comes to have their own favorite dining halls. I personally really like Trumbull for lunches and sometimes dinner, and TD for brunch on the weekends. Also, Silliman, the newest renovated college, has an amazing dining hall that I bring my pre-frosh to, to show off Yale dining. Berkeley’s a good option, but always packed, although this is due to its great food, and perhaps to its animal head décor. You will never feel entirely let down by Yale food, even in Morse & Stiles, which are so far away (relatively speaking) and appear to me to be caves. Regardless, you can’t go wrong at Yale, in eating or anything else imaginable.

Now that the advertisement's over (kidding - thanks, Erin), I'll point out that Yale is a well-publicized leader in the locavore college scene - a trend that Harvard seems to be following up on. (My opinions on that later.)

Especially as a freshman at Harvard, I'm intrigued by upperclass dining (and indeed, I get emailed commentary on it by my classmates), so it's fairly interesting to see a different version of a house system. And of course, eating options, like different (read: copycat) Veritaffles.

Dining-wise, the main difference is really that Harvard offers the same daily menu across all dining halls. Which can be great if you're in the Quad and still want the same herbed orzo offered at Adams...or bad if it's turkey night. And we also all have soft-serve machines.

If you're an inquisitive Yale prefrosh, Erin can be reached for questions (dining or otherwise) through the comment boxes (below) or by email (erin.fackler@yale.edu).



Want to complain about your d-hall system? Comment or drop me a line (heidi@foodivia.com).