Chrüz

Vegetables learned before the pass

Gathering dandelions, plants and flowers with Gilles gave Anthony Le Fur, chef of Chrüz in Eschenbach, a way to read vegetables before they reached the bench. That early lesson still suits an inn kitchen: look closely, use what the place offers, and let the method carry the dish rather than forcing a signature over it. Le Fur’s path has moved through rooms where control mattered. At restaurant Anne de Bretagne, the chef role set a discipline around consistency and the identity of a house. At Jardins Sauvages in La Gacilly, France, where he served as second from 2009-2014, the work brought landscape nearer to the station, with gathering and seasonality treated as part of the craft rather than decoration. Executive chef roles in high-end hotels and restaurants added the demands of scale, timing and leadership. At Chrüz, that accumulation reads naturally: a village inn with polished expectations, a menu broad enough for regulars, and a chef whose stated idea of cooking is transmission. Standards move hand to hand here, through repetition, correction and the habits passed between cooks during service.

Sbrinz, truffle and Alpine cheese

The program at Chrüz is traditional Swiss cooking opened carefully to other registers. The kitchen does not narrow itself to one mood. Spaetzle comes with Sbrinz and truffle, putting a hard Swiss cheese and an aromatic finish onto a familiar form. Cordon bleu carries Alpine cheese, a dish that depends on heat, cut, filling and crust doing their work in the right order. Vorässä 2.0, a turned beef stew, keeps the reference to a regional dish while allowing the kitchen to revise texture and presentation. Salmon green curry sits beside those plates without asking the room to become something else. Italian influence appears in homemade pasta and seasonal specials; Swiss inn cooking remains the base note. The à la carte format matters because it asks the pass to hold several kinds of discipline at once: charcoal-grilled beef entrecôte, chicken piccata, meat loaf, pasta, curry, schnitzel, risotto and dessert all needing their own timing. The wine program is curated, with bottles and glasses supporting the range rather than taking over the table.

The conservatory and the simpler room

Service moves between a stylish conservatory and a plainer dining room, both suited to the kind of cooking Chrüz practices. The room is conversational, not hushed, and the work has the feel of an inn that understands regular use: families, couples, local tables, visitors from the wider St. Gallen region, each asking a slightly different thing from the same kitchen. Plates arrive with the polish expected of guide-recognised dining, but the ingredients remain direct. Potato dishes, fillets, pastries with coffee, cold and hot dishes, seasonal pasta: these are not abstractions. They are the working vocabulary of the house.

Recognition held at this address

Chrüz carries two current guide recognitions, including a Michelin Plate in 2024 and an Étoile Verte Michelin attached to Le Fur’s work. The numbers matter less as decoration than as a pressure on the station: ingredients, flavor and consistency have to hold when the house is full and the menu ranges from spaetzle to salmon green curry. Le Fur has described cuisine as “a spirit of transmission,” and that is the useful close to the room, because a village inn survives by teaching its standards in service after service. At Chrüz, that lesson lands in Vorässä 2.0.