When Hiltl was founded in 1898, meat-free cuisine was far from popular. Today, vegetarian food is about far more than following a trend. Discover how Hiltl helped bring about this transformation.
The original “Vegetarian Home & Temperance Café” was nicknamed the “Root Bunker” by locals, while its guests – mockingly dubbed “grass eaters” – preferred to enter the restaurant through the back door.
How it All
began
Suffering from rheumatic joint pain, Ambrosius Hiltl visited the “Vegetarian Home” on his doctor’s recommendation. He recovered surprisingly quickly and fell in love with the restaurant’s chef, Martha Gneupel. They married and, shortly afterwards, took over the restaurant, which had been founded in 1898. At a time when professional kitchens were very much a male-dominated world, Martha was a rare exception. A pioneer of vegetarian cuisine, she remains a source of inspiration to this day.
The second generation brought plenty of pioneering spirit, too. In the 1950s, Margrith Hiltl, wife of Ambrosius and Martha’s son Leonhard, travelled to Delhi as Switzerland’s official delegate to the World Vegetarian Congress. She fell in love with the country, its people and its cuisine, returned with her suitcase full of Indian spices and wanted to introduce Indian food at Hiltl. The kitchen team initially refused, arguing that nobody would eat such “foreign stuff”. So Margrith began cooking Indian food herself in her private kitchen on the second floor of Haus Hiltl. At first, Swiss guests were not particularly enthusiastic about these far-eastern dishes. But more and more guests from India began visiting Hiltl, and when the airline Swissair even asked whether she could cook for its Indian passengers, the kitchen team’s scepticism soon disappeared. We’re still reaching for the skies today: since 2009, the vegetarian and vegan dishes and special meals served across all SWISS flight classes have come from Hiltl’s recipe collection. More on that below.
Innovation and a new direction
By the middle of the 20th century, Zurich had expanded considerably around Haus Hiltl. The restaurant, which had originally stood on the outskirts of the city, now found itself right in the centre.
In 1959, the third generation joined the family business: Heinz, the son of Margrith and Leonhard, and his wife Hanni. They focused on a younger generation of guests who were more open to healthy and vegetarian cuisine. Then came a spectacular refurbishment in 1973, along with a new name: “Hiltl Vegi”. As the city continued to evolve, so did people’s appreciation of vegetarian food. Interest in plant-based eating and sustainability continued to grow.
The world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant
Rolf Hiltl, son of Heinz and Hanni, brought another breath of fresh air to the family business. In the 1990s, Hiltl began serving alcohol for the first time. Because meat-free doesn’t mean joy-free or flavour-free, and modern part-time vegetarians had become food lovers who wanted to combine healthy eating with genuine enjoyment. This is also where our “Gesunder Genuss” – “healthy enjoyment” – slogan came from. In 1998, exactly 100 years after the restaurant was founded, Rolf Hiltl became the fourth generation to take over the family business. That same year, we published our first cookbook developed at the Hiltl Akademie: “Hiltl. Vegetarian, Just the Way You Like It.” It remains a firm favourite to this day.
Since 2012, Haus Hiltl has officially held the title of the “world’s oldest vegetarian restaurant”, with its own entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
For all those who want the detailed version:
For everyone who’d like to get to know the Hiltl story in a little more detail, there’s also a short film.
Hungry
for more
The expansion continues: We’re still on the lookout for exciting new locations in and around Zurich and along Lake Zurich.
Hiltl above
the clouds
That pioneering spirit continues to this day – and reaches well beyond the clouds. Since 2009, we’ve had a close partnership with SWISS: all vegetarian and vegan dishes, as well as special meals, served on all intercontinental flights departing from Switzerland and on European Business Class flights are created by Hiltl. Behind every menu is a long development process. At Hiltl, internal brainstorming begins around a year in advance. The menu ideas are then refined together with SWISS, tasted and tested internally, and finally presented to the SWISS and Gate Gourmet teams. Only then does the operational implementation begin with Gate Gourmet – ensuring our dishes are just as delicious at altitude as they are on the ground.