Côté Jardin is the all-day brasserie of the Beau-Rivage Palace, sitting in the hotel's enclosed central garden under a high glass roof, surrounded by mature trees and seasonal planting that gives the room a botanical-greenhouse feel year-round. It is the kind of dining room that exists almost nowhere else in Switzerland, the closest comparison is the winter garden at the Gritti Palace in Venice, and on a sunny weekend lunch the light through the glass is genuinely magical.
The cooking is straightforward modern Mediterranean executed at five-star hotel standard. The menu reads as comfortable rather than ambitious, Lake Geneva féra carpaccio with citrus and capers, a perfectly grilled Wagyu rib-eye with bone marrow and chimichurri, an excellent vitello tonnato that the kitchen has been making the same way for years, but every element is sourced and prepared with the same rigour as the hotel's two-Michelin-star flagship one floor above. The bread is house-baked, the olive oil is Ligurian and ferocious, the cheese trolley is one of the best in the country.
The wine list draws from the same 2,000-bin cellar as Anne-Sophie Pic upstairs and is a remarkable resource at brasserie prices. The cocktail bar adjacent to the dining room, the Café Beau-Rivage, is one of the loveliest aperitivo spots in the city; the bartenders are happy to extend a pre-dinner ritual into the room itself.
For a first date that needs to land, the room is the room, the food is excellent, the service is unhurried, and the price is approachable for a five-star hotel, Côté Jardin is the most reliable choice in Lausanne.
