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In true North American fashion, I am accustomed to being served copious amounts of food when eating out, or at least I was until moving to Geneva. There is certainly no shortage of filling or “heavy” food in the Swiss diet; think fondu, frites, raclette, croissants, and of course chocolate. However, I still find it a rare occasion (close to never) that I am served a plate of food in Geneva that will leave me 100% satisfied and not craving just a bit more of dinner.

Menu for all tastes in St. Gallen

I have to say on balance, that I think of this more and more as a healthy phenomenon in and of itself. But there are days meant for eating soul food, I call those days weekends, when really I am concerned less with eating well, than with the notion of burying myself in a pile of shaved lamb meat.

In fact, donner kebabs would be the closest approximation that I can think of in Geneva, to a true Chinese buffet. Whenever my family is having a soul food attack, my wife sends me to the Turkish kebab house nearest to our apartment and I order three sandwiches with everything on them and two sides of french fries. This particular cafe puts so much meat in the sandwich, that we pull half of it out and save it for lunch the next day. Having said all that, there is only so much kebab meat one can eat in a month, and even next month, I will be only mildly interested in the lamb bonanza, having had my fix.

Which explains my euphoria at finding the Rama Indian and Greek food restaurant recently, while searching for dinner in St. Gallen.

Usually, a multi-ethnic menu offering is the first sign of bad things to come. However, with a van full of hungry passengers ready to mutiny, I decided we would  take our  chances.

What we found was a very friendly (if monolingual Swiss German speaking) wait staff, and a Mediterranean cum Latin American, cum South Asian, cum Swiss German menu with something for everyone in our entourage.

My nephew was the first to order, and he pantomimed “big, very big” to the waitress; we needn’t have worried.

In addition to boasting more variety than a Jersey diner, the size of the chicken Byriani, macarroni al forno, gyro, lamb korma and calamar plates was verging on unseemly.

The table was silent as my family devoured the bounty of food in front of us, amazed that the quality and seasoning of the dishes was as impressive as the sheer volume.

Check out this gem of a restaurant on your next visit to St. Gallen – and pack an appetite and a German phrasebook!

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