The Royal Savoy is Lausanne's other historic five-star hotel — a Belle Époque palace built in 1909, restored in a major renovation completed in 2015, and now operated as a Sofitel-affiliated grand hotel on the Avenue d'Ouchy. Eligo is its rooftop fine-dining restaurant, perched on the seventh floor with floor-to-ceiling glass and a private terrace that overlooks the lake, the Alps and the city. It holds one Michelin star and 17 Gault Millau points.
Chef Aurélien Blanc's cooking is contemporary Swiss-Italian — drawing on his French training, his time in northern Italy and the produce of the Vaudois — and is built around a tightly-edited tasting menu that runs to six or seven courses. Lake Geneva perch with lemon and capers; tortelli filled with Vaudois beef shin and finished with wild herbs; a saddle of Lake Geneva venison in autumn with a chocolate-and-bone-marrow sauce that has become one of the restaurant's signatures. The plating is restrained and the portions are generous — a combination that is rarer in modern Michelin cooking than it should be.
The dining room itself is one of the most cinematic in Lausanne: a wraparound balcony around a small open kitchen, the lake stretching south to the French Alps in floor-to-ceiling glass, the Lausanne old-town spires rising behind. At sunset the lighting team softens the interiors gradually as the light outside shifts; by the time the cheese course arrives the room is genuinely glowing. The terrace is open in the warmer months and is among the most romantic outdoor dining experiences in French-speaking Switzerland.
For a proposal, an anniversary or any meal where the view should do half the work, Eligo is the most reliable rooftop choice in the city.
