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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.
