Restaurant de l'Hotel de Ville

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A House Built on Seven Decades of Excellence

Few restaurants anywhere carry the weight of history that the Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville does. Situated in Crissier, just outside Lausanne, this address has been home to five generations of chefs over 71 years, each one shaping what French haute cuisine can mean at its most rigorous. The lineage runs from the legendary Fredy Girardet through Philippe Rochat and Benoît Violier — names that defined European gastronomy for decades. In 2016, Franck Giovannini took over the kitchen alongside his wife Stéphanie, becoming the latest custodian of a tradition that has earned three Michelin stars and a score of 19/20 at the Gault&Millau. The restaurant's place on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2011 confirmed what Switzerland had long known: Crissier belongs in the same conversation as any table on earth.

Franck Giovannini's Philosophy

Chef Giovannini describes his approach as a cuisine of values — not an abstract claim, but a working method. Ingredients arrive whole, unmanipulated, and are selected for texture, appearance, and flavour before anything else. The kitchen controls the entire supply chain, maximising freshness and avoiding the kind of over-processing that blunts a product's character. His cooking balances innovation with deep respect for culinary roots, playing with textures and temperatures while keeping flavours pure and uncluttered. Each plate, as he puts it, should tell a story and reflect the terroir it comes from.

What's on the Table

The current winter menu — Carte N°68 — reads as a precise portrait of the season. The gastronomic menu at 410 CHF opens with shredded spider crab marinated in tarragon with leeks and a reduction of Marc d'Epesses, moves through a soup of scallops with bouquet prawns, panais and oscietra caviar, and a signature tart of Crissier cardoons with black Provençal truffles. Main courses range from John Dory fillet with green pepper and salted duck breast to blue lobster ravioli with roasted squash in a smoked paprika bisque, and Bruson milk-fed lamb larded with winter salsify. The à la carte section extends further: Breton lobster roasted in its shell with black truffle, veal sweetbreads Périgueux-style, and a Nantais duck in red wine "Girardet" — a direct nod to the house's founding chef, served for two. A discovery menu at 360 CHF offers eight surprise courses built around the best produce of the moment, while a quicker lunch menu at 260 CHF is designed to be completed in under two hours.

The Rhythm of the Seasons

The restaurant changes its carte five times a year — spring, early summer, midsummer, autumn, and winter — and punctuates the calendar with special evenings dedicated to game, seafood, and Swiss regional cooking. This seasonal discipline is not incidental; it is central to what Giovannini's haute cuisine stands for. Alongside the restaurant, a bakery opened in December 2021 in the heart of Crissier, and cooking courses offer a more hands-on way to engage with the kitchen's world. The table at Crissier is, in every sense, a living institution.