Tea at the Carlton. Otherwise Known as My First Swiss Doggy Bag.

I never thought my first Swiss doggy bag would happen at the Carlton’s English Afternoon Tea in Zurich, but there I was, being offered a doggy bag for my uneaten scones.

I wasn’t going to say no. I’m an American and for me, doggy bags are nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve never seen a Swiss person take one. But that wasn’t going to stop me from taking advantage of this novelty, after almost three years of dining out in Zurich, at being offered—for the first time ever in Switzerland—to take something unfinished with me.

The American friend I was with took the concept further and managed to add a small lemon tart to our waitress-produced, aluminum-foil wrapped scones.

“Take the shortbread,” my friend urged me, handing it to me off the three-tiered silver platter.

Sure, it wasn’t so elegant or sophisticated to be stuffing little snacks from our fancy silver platter into a bit of aluminum foil, but then again, I’m neither elegant or sophisticated.

The Carlton Restaurant, on Bahnhofstrasse 41 in Zurich, offers (to quote their brochure) “Very, very british, unser English Afternoon Tea.”



You can have this “very, very british tea”, Wednesday through Saturdays from 2:30 p.m. until 5 p.m. for SFr 34. Since there’s enough food on the platter to even take it with you after the fact, you really can justify the price as it can serve as your lunch as well.

The only thing the tea included that I wasn’t happy about was the cigarette smoke-filled room. Somehow, this part of teatime seemed “sehr, sehr, Swiss” in concept.