Andermatt - 2
One of the outstanding features of the entire Andermatt project is the enthusiasm and the niceness of all the people. Maria Giulia Arcelli, above, is in the guest relations team. She's Italian, and she's just passionate about hospitality. At six - years, not hours - she told her father she wanted to own a hotel. She just loves helping people and giving them amazing experiences (you can see it in the enthusiasm in her face). Before Girlahead left Andermatt, she'd asked for a sandwich to take for her long day of rail travel. She left just after 8:30 in the morning, and there was Maria Giulia waiting with a bag with two disposable boxes, each containing an enormous sandwich, really good farmer's type bread, holding Swiss cheese and Swiss ham, held the slices of bread held together with wooden toothpicks with little decorations on the end, and highlighted by folds of near-transparent cucumber. Brilliant look, brilliant thought.
Really, everybody Girlahead met seemed to love being involved in the project. There were people from Poland and Germany and Italy. There was also one Swiss, Harvey, who on his regular early morning run around the area had picked some wildflowers. which were in a vase on the table in suite 1506, next to a wooden platter holding a selection of Swiss cheeses and Swiss cold cuts. There's definitely a Swissness about the whole place, even though it's managed by the world.
Food, by the way, is really important. At The Chedi, the main dining space, The Restaurant, serves three meals a day. As you go in, you're greeted by a ceiling-high cheese room, as impressive as any that Girlahead has ever seen. Breakfast is served in the entire cavernous space of the restaurant. There's a feeling that if all the inhabitants of the hundreds of residences could come here for breakfast simultaneously, nothing would phase the staff. Interestingly, there's a very capable and senior level breakfast manager. What a difference this makes. The whole service runs like clockwork. There's also a private dining room with a window through to it from the hallway, from the lobby, which is a bit of an extraordinary experience, as you could feel as if you're dining in a goldfish bowl.
The cuisine in The Restaurant is European-Asian and Girlahead combined both. There was a sharing platter of dim sum. And after that, breast of veal on a bed of mashed potatoes. and broccoli for color as well as nutrition. Swiss chocolate had to end that meal naturally. Another night, dinner was in The Japanese, a unique experience in one of two adjacent rooms run as one by The Twins, Fabio & Dominik (they are twins, even though one of them has changed his family name to that of his Japanese wife). The food was exquisite, beautifully served, amazing tastes, very flexible. You can do a sake pairing, a tea pairing, or choose wines from The Chedi's amazing cellar, which has nearly 9,000 bottles in it. On a considerably more believable level, Girlahead was persuaded to do a comparison with her Wagyu-5 main course. She had a wine by the Opus One team as well as a sake. And whereas the wine tried to dominate the beef, the sake seemed to dance with it, one complementing t’other.
