A seat at Switzerland’s table

Portuguese enclaves

In fact, the many Portuguese customers only come as a surprise to tourists and foreigners not familiar with Switzerland.

About 270,000 Portuguese live in Switzerland, making it the third-largest foreign community in the country. Many of them live in French-speaking Switzerland. In the canton of Neuchâtel, for example, "da Silva" has become the most common surname, well ahead of traditional cantonal names such as Jeanneret or Robert.

The situation is similar in nearby Fribourg, where Lopes has his bakery. The Portuguese accent can be heard in many shops in the cities of Fribourg and Bulle and it is common to hear the language spoken on the street.

Unlike the two largest groups of foreigners in Switzerland - Italians and Germans, from neighbouring countries - the Portuguese have a culture very different from that of the Swiss, especially when it comes to food. But over the years, Portuguese restaurants have become as much a part of the fabric of places like Fribourg as its wine cellars or fondue restaurants.

Same ingredients, different result

“The bread itself is identical, the components are the same, but there are different techniques and habits," says Lopes of a staple found in both the Swiss and Portuguese diets. But the Portuguese consume twice or even three times as much bread as the Swiss, the baker says.

"[They] have the habit of going to the bakery every day to get three, four or five loaves of bread, maybe going twice just to get the fresh hot bread. Here, they buy bread every two or three days. "

Lopes adapted his bakery to cater to such Swiss habits. So, along with the various smaller rolls, there are also larger, whole-grain breads and even very typical seasonal specialties, such as "Stollen", a German cake with raisins and candied fruits.

Many of the Portuguese living in Switzerland seem to have taken on the Swiss habit of only coming to the bakery every few days, though perhaps for other reasons.

"The Portuguese here - or in any other country they have migrated to - always try not to spend too much, because they go to another country to save and not to spend,” Lopes says. “They avoid coming every day for breakfast, and maybe they come to the bakery once or twice a week, or only at the weekend."

So why didn’t he stay in Portugal to try to launch a business where the regulars are more, well, regular?

"I came to Switzerland on an adventure, not out of necessity as many people do,” Lopes says. “Switzerland is a country renowned for chocolate and I am a chocolate fanatic. That’s the kind of pastry art that interests me the most.”

But he entered the world of pastries and confectionary purely by chance. At the end of his formal schooling in Portugal, the young Lopes decided to stop studying and entered the job market instead. "Pastry was the first job opportunity that came along and the more I discovered the profession, the more I felt the need to specialise in it," explains the confectioner, who is now 37 years old.

"I started looking for professionals who could give me this specific training, this was the path I wanted to follow," he says. And so, the boy from a small community in northern Portugal began attending a professional culinary school in Oporto, the country’s second-largest city.

He soon became an expert in personalised cakes - 3D creations with figurines - and his passion for working with chocolate aroused his curiosity about Switzerland.

The opportunity to move to the Alpine country came about through a friend who invited him to work in a company specialising in Portuguese products.

Breaking bread, making a living

It was not difficult for the baker to land on his feet in Switzerland, because the company he worked for helped him fit in. His colleagues had a good command of the language and knew how to rent an apartment and get the necessary paperwork.

But learning about the culture took more time. Before moving, Lopes had only been on vacation in Switzerland, which left him with images of snow, mountains and chocolate – but not much of an idea of how everyday life would treat him.

When he began working in the country, he quickly discovered that earning a living as a baker demands hard work, just like in Portugal. 

“I used to live for work and here it is the same thing,” Lopes says. “I have very little spare time, and when I do have time off, I dedicate myself to studying and researching for my job.”

“In my profession it is necessary to work seven days a week, day and night.”

Years later, he’s still learning about the quirks of Swiss cuisine and picking up inspiration for new dishes.

"Swiss pastry does not have much variety,” he points out. “They do just a few things, but what is done is very well done.”

Then there’s the cheese, which he’s become a fan of, especially in delicate specialties like tarts and quiches. And he continues to be intrigued by combinations of ice creams, meringues and mousses in Swiss desserts like “vacherin glacé”, found in the Fribourg region.

The Portuguese confectioner does not regret having chosen this place and this path in life. His business now employs seven people, and he provides bread and pastries to restaurants and markets across the area.

His commitment to his employees and clients, and to accomplishing a job well done, gives him the strength to endure homesickness and the long months of cold that can accompany life for a Portuguese in Switzerland.

Business, fame and friendship

Culinary skills are a vital part of social networks in Asian culture, an idea that Liyah has brought to Switzerland. Although she has not yet started her own business, the food delivery service she has been providing for years has made her well-known around town – even famous, as one of her customers puts it.

“Once I invited friends over to my place, and one of my friends recognized Liyah’s sushi straight away.”

“I ordered ramen for this year’s party. The price at three Swiss Francs per portion can be found nowhere else in Switzerland. Liyah always says something like ‘I’m glad I could help’, which makes me think that she was not doing business at all.”

In response, Liyah smiles and says she just cooks for fun.

“We are friends, and if they like my food, then I just cook! Normally I only charge for ingredients and a little labour.”

Search for identity

In the past year, Liyah has taken her sushi expertise to the classroom as a culinary instructor at the Migros Club School. Apart from teaching, each session includes one hour for tasting and chatting, which has helped her better understand her students and the local culture.

“I really enjoy it. I feel that the bond between me and the students is getting deeper, and I know what Swiss people are thinking and interested in,” Liyah says. “I can even understand Swiss German if I concentrate.

”Liyah herself acquired Swiss citizenship long ago, having lived in the country for a decade with a Swiss spouse.

“But once, my daughter said to me, ‘You are not Swiss. You are Chinese!’ I think she’s right. I can never be a Swiss woman through and through. I am a Chinese-Taiwanese woman.”

Her understanding of family and friendship is more Chinese, but her habits, she says – like punctuality and politeness on the telephone – are more Swiss.

She thinks about it a bit more, then concludes, “my home, my family and my roots are here, in Switzerland.”

“More specifically, I think I am a Chinese-Swiss woman.”

“There were times, especially around getting a job and feeling secure, that were really scary for me,” she recalls.

Working as a pastry chef proved too difficult because Swiss bakeries were only prepared to offer her an apprenticeship or internship at first – not enough to make a living. So Pilot began teaching English and sharing her love of food with her students by making it a discussion point in class.

“Food was such a great topic to talk about because people have such strong opinions about it and everyone wants to share their family's recipes,” she says. Looking back, she thinks having that common conversation point helped her feel at home in Switzerland, even as she struggled with learning German and getting up the confidence to speak it.

“If someone had told me at the time not to worry about being shy or making mistakes, that would have been good advice,” she says.

Tasting Switzerland

Pilot originally moved to Switzerland intending to stay a year. Today, she is settled in long-term with her Swiss husband and one-year-old daughter, living across the street from a field of cows among the rolling hills of the Emmental region. Her mother, who left Switzerland for Canada in the 1960s, has also just moved in nearby and is going through the process of re-integrating in her homeland.

Syrian chef Nadeem Khadem al-Jamie took tens of thousands of steps in his voyage to reach Geneva and leave behind a homeland gripped by violence and conflict. But the journey of fitting in his new home has only just begun, and once again the road looks long.

Nadeem hopes his cooking skills will help speed up the process and pave the way for a better future for his family.

“Cooking is a bridge to integrate into Swiss culture,” says Nadeem, who aspires in the coming years to learn enough about Swiss cuisine to merge it with the richest flavours of his homeland.

Arrival in Switzerland

Nadeem reached Geneva on August 8, 2015.

Cheerful crowds celebrating a summer festival on the streets of the lakeside city hinted at the start of a brighter chapter. The journey had been rough – including a near-drowning when a dinghy over-packed with fellow migrants capsized between the Turkish coastal city of Izmir and the Greek island of Chios.

Joined by his two brothers, Nadeem traversed on foot the border areas connecting Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. They used limited public transportation to move within national borders.

The Syrian siblings were part of an unprecedented influx of refugees and migrants to reach Europe that summer, most of them fleeing war.

Taking part in the street rallies demanding reforms from President Bashar al-Assad put him, as well as many of his friends and relatives, on the wanted list of one of the region’s most-feared government security forces.

Calls for reform gave way to demands for the ouster of the Assad regime. The stage was set for a brutal military crackdown that crushed the nation’s protest hubs one by one. Nadeem was also wanted by the security forces because he had skipped military service.

“These two reasons were the cause of my escape from Syria to Switzerland,” he says.

Raids and searches initially focused on his family home soon zeroed in on his workplace. The neon hues of the pickle stand - packed nose-high with carrots, cauliflower, cucumber and peppers - were no longer enough cover. It became too dangerous to commute to work even when taking the back streets to avoid regime checkpoints.

As a man on the run, Nadeem joined the kitchen staff at the Abu Jedi restaurant in Damascus. He began as a cook’s assistant and gradually worked his way up to the rank of chef. In the kitchen, he thrived under the guidance of his father-in-law, learning how to make a wide variety of Damascene dishes and sweets.

Syrian security services detained his cooking mentor for approximately one month over his participation in the Damascus protests. The experience was so grueling that the man only survived a week after his release. It is one of many losses the chef and his wife experienced over the course of Syria’s conflict.

“I learned so many things from him I couldn’t possibly list them all,” Nadeem says of his teacher in the kitchen.

Cooking, he adds, can bring back a flood of memories but at the same time helps keep them at bay. It forces his mind to focus on the task at hand. Syrians say cooking is “nefs” – a concept akin to soul. His brown locks tucked under a wool winter hat, Nadeem puts all his energy into every task in the kitchen, whether chopping, mixing, seasoning or washing up.

Feeding the Swiss

Kitchen flair has already earned Nadeem some notoriety if not the opportunity of a stable job here in Switzerland. He was one of five chefs spotlighted in the 2017 Geneva Refugee Food Festival. The event, a citizen-inspired initiative created by Food Sweet Food and supported by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), that has also been held in other European cities, aims to change attitudes towards refugees by highlighting their talents and facilitating their professional integration.

The Syrian chef walked away from the experience with high hopes and a white chef coat, his name elegantly embroidered over the chest pocket. It was a gift from the chef at the luxury Hotel D’Angleterre, which opened up its kitchen for him to use during the festival.

Nadeem treasures the memory of this special opportunity to cook for more than a hundred people. It gave him fresh insights into the Swiss, who, he was stunned to discover, seem to like their vegetables with no fanfare - in other words, boiled and seasoned with a pinch of pepper and salt.

“Cooking is a door to finding work and stability and integrating into society,” Nadeem insists while preparing a feast that is slow in the making but quickly fills the apartment with perfumes evocative of the courtyard restaurants of Old City Damascus.

It takes more than four hours to prepare the piece de resistance on the day’s menu: fetteh makdous. The word fetteh, colloquial Arabic for torn bread, points to the Levantine origin of the dish and a cooking method that requires the layering of different ingredients over a base of shredded pita.

Makdous, meanwhile, is a nod to the central element at the heart of this variation: eggplants stuffed with minced meat and toasted pine nuts. A delicate yoghurt-based white sauce crowns this crunchy and fragrant delicacy.

“This is a typical dish of Damascene origin, from Damascus,” he says. “There is no house, no neighborhood in Damascus, where this isn't a main meal. It is considered a starter.”

A place to cook

Nadeem prepares the food at the home of Samia Hamdan, a native of Lebanon who arrived in Switzerland in 1980. She is now a Swiss citizen and heads a charitable association helping refugees integrate into Swiss society through culinary and cultural activities (Association Rencontres et Cultures du Monde Arabe RCMA). Hamdan is delighted to have secured a suitable venue for such cooking exchanges that always end in a shared meal.

It would have been impossible for the Syrian chef to pull together the same culinary feat where he lived on arrival in Switzerland. The family of four had two rooms to itself but other areas, including the kitchen and toilets, were shared with more than two hundred asylum seekers and refugees.

Now, in their own apartment, he is grateful to have a separate kitchen but questions the merits of it being open-space and directly connected to the living room. Arabic cuisine is not only labour intensive but also highly aromatic.

When it comes to Swiss food, the Syrian chef has only sampled a few local staples so far, among them fondue and the traditional potato-cheese punch known as raclette. Nadeem says he’s not exactly a cheese fanatic.

“We have at the most ten types of cheese [in Syria],” he says with humor. “When I go into a shopping centre here, I see cheeses that I never saw in my life there.”

Seeking a culinary link

Although he’s been searching, Nadeem has yet to find a common element between Syrian and Swiss cuisine. The differences, on the other hand, seem to be plenty. The Swiss prefer quick, ready-made food, small dishes and may eat alone. Syrians, on the other hand, tend make a feast out of every meal, sending the leftovers to their friends and neighbors.

While the Swiss favour fresh and cold yoghurt, Syrians often serve it hot, using vast quantities and mixing it with meat in many of their signature dishes.

And some ingredients and spices prominent in Syrian cuisine are difficult or impossible to find here. Nadeem stocks up and searches for substitutes among the shelves of a Pakistani vendor near Geneva’s Cornavin train station or across the border in France where he found a Moroccan shop stocking Arabic goods.

“If I open a restaurant I want to call it Damascus,” says Nadeem. “I want to feel like I am in Damascus.”

But the menu, he hopes, would reflect a beautiful pairing of ingredients drawn from both Levantine and Western cuisine. It is too early to know what exactly that could look like, he admits, noting that he has yet to see how the Swiss cook in their own homes.

During his time in the country, he has enjoyed a growing number of opportunities to give Geneva’s Swiss and global residents a taste of Syria. But what he really wants now is to dive in and decode the tastes of Switzerland, to create new dishes “that are welcomed by both sides... to be a link between the West and the Levant.”