GenevaLunch - Aubonne, Vaud, Switzerland

L'Esplanade in Aubonne, Vaud

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:18:20 +0100

The restaurant has an open, airy brasserie as well as an elegant and cozy dining room, where one of the options is to sit by a window that looks in on the kitchen. Here, a rare quiet moment.

Feature - GenevaLunch hits 100,000 pages viewed and you could win lunch for two!

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 09:35:23 +0100

[Ed. note: Update Monday at 11:04 - we're now at 99,717. Earlier update Saturday, 23:34 - 98,926 and counting!]

GenevaLunch - Sometime between Sunday and Tuesday GenevaLunch will hit 100,000 pages viewed since this news site went live in June 2006. To thank our visitors we've decided to offer a wonderful lunch or dinner for two (value: SFr200) at the recently renovated L'Espanade in Aubonne, whose chef Guillaume Trouillot was selected by Gault-Millau as their "Discovery of the year 2007."

We've arrived at this point sooner than expected, which means that our traffic is increasing rapidly: GenevaLunch has on average 2,800 unique visitors a week, viewing on average nearly two pages per visit. Nearly half (47,000) of the pages viewed have been visited in the first three months of 2007.

L'Esplanade, mushroom soup

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:27:41 +0100

L'Esplanade's soup, mushroom elegance

L'Esplanade, dessert

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:25:55 +0100

L'Esplanade's chocolate and café dreamy end to a meal

L'Esplanade, foie gras

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:24:13 +0100

Foie gras with raspberry sauce

The perfect business lunch

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:01:20 +0100

Yesterday I had a nearly perfect business lunch at L'Esplanade in Aubonne, Vaud (details at end). The auberge communale, or village restaurant, reopened in February after renovations by its award-winning young chef, Guillaume Trouillet. He won out over 25 other candidates 5 April 2006 when the commune awarded a new contract for the auberge.

The only flaw yesterday was eating at noon, which meant I had to return to my computer screen.

I've had a lot of business lunches over the years, in several cities and countries. Some were great and some were awful, and most were in between, which I suspect is par for the course. I've avoided them when I had too much to do, resisted prodding from a business development assistant who felt I should live my life in restaurants, loved them when I was doing travel writing and I could linger and call it part of the job.

St. Paddy's Day green, from Aubonne, Switzerland

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:36:40 +0000

Green grow the rushes (actually, those are the tall red things at the back): a Happy St. Paddy's Day if you're Irish and eating chocolate in Versoix on 17 March. Enjoy, but don't forget the green.

Ikea parking ramp beam a "miscalculation"

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:43:59 +0000

24 Heures, Fre - Ikea in Aubonne will be able to repair the damaged beam in its parking ramp and reopen the 800-slots area within three weeks, the store has been told by experts called in to assess damage. A beam that slipped several centimteres in the parking ramp Saturday caused the store to evacuate the area on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The store itself was not touched. The problem was due to a simple miscalculation at the time it was built, the experts quickly established.

Animal therapy helps dying patients in Aubonne

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 10:38:50 +0100

24 heures, Fre - For the past two and a half years Hélène Tesauri has been bringing animals to visit terminally ill patients at the Aubonne Hospital, the only such service offered in Switzerland. The programme initially allowed patients to be visited by their pets from home, but for hygienic reasons they were limited to the terrace. A move to ground floor quarters with an appropriate reception area made it possible to expand the programme to Tesauri's rabbit, turtledove and dog.

Tesauri says the animals are often worn out when they leave the hospital.