Meeting Ivo Adam

Ristorante Easy Ascona (26 of 44)

While vacationing in Switzerland last month, I was not expecting to encounter any stars.  But the stalking gods were definitely smiling down upon me because encounter a star, I did – a Swiss celebrity chef named Ivo Adam.

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Upon arriving in Ascona, a gorgeous lakeside town in Switzerland’s Ticino region, my best friend Robin’s girlfriend, Steffi, suggested we grab an afternoon cocktail (or aperitivo) at her favorite area bar, Sea Lounge – a watering hole that sits rights on the harbor of Lake Maggiore.

Ristorante Easy Ascona (20 of 44)

Ristorante Easy Ascona (1 of 1)

A portion of Sea Lounge is situated inside of a little cave, which is where our group sat.

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (8 of 44)

As you can see below, the views, even from inside of the cave, are absolutely spectacular!

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (7 of 44)

The entire restaurant is pretty darn amazing, actually.  That’s the hallway leading to the bathrooms – yes, the bathrooms – pictured below.

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (15 of 44)

The bathroom faucets, which are controlled by a metal touch screen, were a sight to behold in and of themselves!  As you can see below, when a patron turns the temperature to cold, a blue light comes on.

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And when the water is turned to hot, a red light comes on.  So incredibly cool!

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While enjoying our bubbly, Steffi, Robin and Robin’s mom, Doina, told the Grim Cheaper and me about Seaside Lounge’s owner, celebrity chef Ivo Adam, who is quite well-known in Switzerland thanks to his new television series, The Swiss Cookbook with Ivo Adam, and a series of commercials he starred in for the Coop grocery store chain.  At one point, Steffi mentioned that she had seen Ivo the last time she was at the Lounge.  Well, once I heard that Ivo might actually be on the premises, that was it!  I was bound and determined to get a picture with him and pretty much nothing was going to stop me!  Next thing I know, Doina announced that she saw Ivo approaching.  So I ran up to him, explained that I was a tourist from America and that I would love to take a photo with him.  Ivo agreed, thanked me for visiting, and happily posed with me and Steffi.  As you can imagine, I could NOT have been more excited!  Woot woot!

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The Biel-born Ivo got his start in the culinary arts while still in elementary school, when he began baking cakes for his classmates’ birthdays.  He was later formally trained as a chef, a pastry chef and a chocolatier.  In 2000, Ivo became the youngest person ever appointed to the Swiss Culinary National Team.  He opened his first restaurant, Apropos, in 2004, at the age of 27.  Three years later, he partnered with Birgit and Stefan Breuer to open Seven in Ascona – the name of which is derived from the fact that the Breuer family boasts seven members.  The fine-dining establishment has since gone on to earn a Michelin star.  Sea Lounge was founded shortly thereafter and in 2008, Ivo and the Breuers opened two additional Ascona eateries – a casual bistro named Seven Easy (pictured below) and a sushi bar named Seven Asia.  Robin likes to joke that Ivo owns every restaurant in town.  😉

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (31 of 44)

Ivo is also the author of several award-winning cookbooks.  Oh, and he’s a hit rapper.  Yes, a rapper.  As Adam stated in a 2008 Swiss News interview, “Back in 2004, I gave a presentation on diet and healthy eating for my diploma and wanted to get my message across to young people.  Rap and hip-hop seemed a great way to do that.  I put together a CD with some rapped recipes.”  His CD consisted of 16 recipes – or “rapcipes”, as the newspaper called them.  Amazingly enough, the single “Birchermuesli” (about a popular Swiss breakfast dish consisting of oats and fruit) went double-platinum!  Everything the young chef touches seems to turn to gold.  It is no wonder that he has been dubbed the Jamie Oliver of Switzerland.

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 Ristorante Easy Ascona (34 of 44)

On the recommendation of Steffi, our group wound up eating at Seven Easy that night and, let me tell you, it was spectacular!  Pricey, but spectacular.  Robin made the best menu choice by ordering the UH-MA-ZING truffle pizza.  Though not at all diabetic friendly, I was kicking myself for not having ordered it because it was honestly one of the best things I have ever tasted.

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (39 of 44)

Like Sea Lounge, the design of Easy is altogether unique, with tree trunk cocktail tables, chalkboard menus and a wall made of sawed-off log cross-sections.  Love it!

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Ristorante Easy Ascona (38 of 44)

I would be remiss if I did not share some photographs of Ascona in this post, as it is an absolutely GORGEOUS part of Switzerland.

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Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for even more stalking fun!  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Seven Easy is located at Piazza Giuseppe Motta 61 in Ascona, Switzerland.  Sea Lounge is located at just up the street at via Moscia 2.  You can visit Ivo Adam’s official website here.

Ladurée from “Gossip Girl”

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Ever since watching the Season 4 episode of Gossip Girl titled “Juliet Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, in which Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) was shown in a bubble bath eating a box, ahem, boxes of Ladurée macarons, I have been just slightly obsessed with the Paris-based confectionery. Since the chain’s only U.S. outpost is located in New York, though, and since it did not open until August 2011 and my last trip to the Big Apple was in 2009 (yikes!), I had never had the chance to sample any of the bakery’s iconic pastel-colored wares. So when my best friend, Robin, informed me that Ladurée had a shop in Zurich, I just about passed out from excitement and added the place to my Switzerland Must-Stalk list – even though, being that nothing has been filmed there, it is not technically a stalking location.

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Ladurée was originally founded as a small bakery at 16 rue Royale in Paris in 1862 by a miller from the southwest of France named Louis Ernest Ladurée. In 1871, the shop was burned in a fire and Louis subsequently built a larger pastry store in its place. He commissioned French painter/poster artist Jules Cheret to design the interior, which was bathed in a celadon hue. It was not until 1930, though, when the shop started serving its now legendary macarons, that Ladurée gained its immense popularity. There are several differing accounts as to who actually created the macaron as it is known today, but, according to the Ladurée website, Louis’ grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, is the responsible party. Although a single-decker variety of the meringue cookie had been in existence since the 1500s, it was not until Pierre came up with the idea of cementing two of those wafers together with a ganache paste that the contemporary macaron was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Shortly thereafter, Pierre, acting upon an idea from Louis’ wife, Jeanne Souchard, decided to open a female-friendly tea salon on the premises. At the time, the fairer sex was not allowed inside of Paris cafes. As you can imagine, the Ladurée tea room quickly became a massive hit.

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In 1993, the father and son duo of Francis and David Holder purchased the bakery with the hopes of taking it global. And that they did. The second Ladurée opened on Paris’ prestigious Champs-Élysées in 1997. Thirteen additional French stores quickly followed. Today the company has boutiques in twenty different countries, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Hong Kong, from which it sells a whopping 15,000 cookies per day.

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The interior of Ladurée (which we, unfortunately, were not allowed to take photographs of) is like a cotton-candy dreamworld! It is absolutely adorable and filled to the brim with pastel-colored boxes, which have become collectors items among macaron aficionados.

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Robin’s mom, Doina, and girlfriend, Steffi, and I opted for the bakery’s vanilla-flavored macaron variety and it was pretty much the best thing I have ever eaten! As someone who has sampled quite a few different macaron brands in her day, I can honestly say that Ladurée puts them all to shame! If there was a California branch, I wouldn’t be able to stay away! Thank God there is not, otherwise I would be in permanent diabetic shock. 😉 Amazingly enough, at most Ladurée outposts in other countries, the cookies are not made onsite, but flown in daily from Paris! That is not the case with the shop in Zurich, though, so Doina, Steffi and I were lucky enough to taste fresh cookies made right on the premises.

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Gossip Girl is hardly the first production to make use of Ladurée macarons. Not only were the cookies featured in Marie Antoinette . . .

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. . . but the confection actually formed the basis of the color palate for the entire 2006 movie. As stated in an article from London’s The Times Magazine, “At the start of pre-production, [director Sophia] Coppola handed [costume designer] Milena Canonero a box of pastel-coloured macaroons from the Ladurée pastry house. ‘She told me, “These are the colours I love”,’ recalls Canonero. ‘I used them as a palette.’” Love it!

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And while a few websites have stated that the final episode of Sex and the City did some filming at the Ladurée store in Paris, I scanned through the episode yesterday and did not see the bakery pop up anywhere.

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Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for even more stalking fun! And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The Swiss outpost of Ladurée, Blair Waldorf’s favorite macaron shop on Gossip Girl, is located at Kuttelgasse 17, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland. You can visit the official Ladurée website here.

Contra Dam from “GoldenEye”

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Sorry to have been M.I.A. the past couple of days.  My dad had surgery last Wednesday and I spent the better portion of the remainder of the week in the hospital with him.  He is having a follow-up surgery this upcoming Wednesday, as well, so this week will also probably be light on posts.  I apologize in advance.  Anyway, today, my stalking friends, IAMNOTASTALKER is going global!  And a word of warning – if you are at all afraid of heights, you are NOT going to like this locale.  When the Grim Cheaper and I were on vacation in Switzerland last month, my best friend, Robin (who planned our entire trip), took us on a little detour to the Ticino region to stalk the Contra Dam, which was featured in the iconic opening bungee jump sequence of the 1995 007 movie GoldenEye.

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The Contra Dam, which is also known as the Locarno Dam and the Verzasca Dam, was originally constructed beginning in 1960 to support the Verzasca Hydroelectric Power Station, which is pictured in the images below.

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The structure was designed by Lombardi & Gellaro Ltd. and took five years to complete.  The pouring of the concrete alone (the arch-style dam is comprised of 23,000,000 cubic feet of concrete!) took a whopping 18 months to execute!

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GoldenEye Dam (12 of 32)

The dam’s stunning reservoir, which is known as Lago di Vogorno, began to load with water in August 1964 and the dam was finally completed a little over a year later, in September 1965, when the lake was filled to its maximum capacity.  Oddly enough, the initial filling of Lago di Vogorno, which boasts a surface area of 400 acres, caused several earthquakes, which was apparently a side effect of the rapid speed with which the water rose.  As a result, the reservoir had to be drained and refilled once again shortly thereafter.

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Contra Dam, which is the fourth tallest dam in Switzerland, stands at 721 feet (220 meters), with its crest running a length of 1,250 feet (381 meters).

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This shot gives me vertigo just looking at it!

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Don’t look down!

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With my Swiss family on the dam.  🙂

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A permanent bungee jump station is now located in the middle of the dam, where those who are so inclined can do their own 7.5-second, 721-foot jump.

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James Bond Dam (1 of 26)

Robin bungeed from there a few years back, loved it, and tried to convince the GC and I to do the same.  And while I was not at all keen on the idea to begin with, once I found out that jumps cost about $270 per person, I informed Robin that, for that price, I would much rather buy a pair of new shoes.  Winking smile

James Bond Dam (9 of 26)

The Contra Dam appeared only once in GoldenEye, in the opening scene in which James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is shown bungee jumping off of the dam and eventually latching onto the top of Russia’s Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility, which is supposedly located below.

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Some amazing shots of the dam were shown in the sequence and its appearance, although brief, was pretty darn striking.

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In reality, Pierce Brosnan never set foot on the Contra Dam during filming.  The scene was instead performed by a British stuntman named Wayne Michaels, who, incredibly enough, completed the stunt in a single take in front of six well-positioned cameras.

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The jump was choreographed and coordinated by The Oxford Stunt Factory.  So that Michaels would not hit the dam wall during the stunt, a special platform was constructed above and in front of the dam.  You can see that platform in the screen captures below.

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In 2002, a Sky Movies website poll deemed the jump the best movie stunt of all time.  The feat also set the then world record for the highest bungee jump from a fixed structure.  According to a BBC news website, of the jump, Michaels said, “It’s pushing the limits of what can physically be done.  The body is travelling at such a high rate of speed that it puts a great deal of strain on you.”  Um, yeah, that’s why I’d rather have a new pair of shoes!

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Oddly enough, when Bond escapes from the facility at the end of the scene, he is in a different location entirely and the Contra Dam is no longer anywhere in sight.

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You can watch the opening scene of GoldenEye by clicking below.

The entire time we were at the dam (and for quite a few days thereafter) I was constantly singing what I thought was the James Bond theme song.  It was not until a few days after we returned home that the GC turned to me, while I was in mid-song, and said, “You do realize that you’re singing the Mission: Impossible theme, right?”  Not my proudest moment.  Winking smile

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The Contra Dam also appeared in the first episode of Season 14 of The Amazing Race, in which one member of each team had to perform a bungee jump as a Roadblock challenge.

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After stalking the dam, we headed a few miles north to Switzerland’s Lavertezzo municipality where we visited the region’s famous Ponte dei Salti (which translates to “Bridge of Jumps”).  And while nothing has been filmed onsite (that I know of), the place is just too beautiful not to share.

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The double-arch Romanesque-style bridge was originally constructed out of stone during the 16th or 17th century, but was destroyed by a flood in 1906.  It was eventually rebuilt in 1958.

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Ponte dei Salti spans the Verzasca River, whose waters, as you can see below, are a spectacularly vivid shade of green.

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It almost looks fake – like the water at Disneyland.

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James Bond Dam (16 of 26)

The area surrounding the bridge looks like it was ripped right from a postcard.  Absolutely beautiful!

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Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for even more stalking fun!  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Contra Dam from GoldenEye (which does not have an actual address) is located at the northern end of Via Valle Verzasca in Gordola, Switzerland.  You can learn more about bungee jumping off the dam here.  Ponte dei Salti is located just a few miles north in 6633 Lavertezzo.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

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The Grim Cheaper and I are heading to Switzerland this evening to visit my best friend, who lives there, for a two-week vacation. I have not been to the Land of the Alps since August 1995, when my parents took me there as my high school graduation present. I fell in love with the country and cannot wait to share its beauty with the GC.

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The amazing photographs posted here are some that my dad took during that trip, almost 18 years ago.

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That’s me and my best friend Robin circa 1995 in Switzerland on the left and circa 2010 at my wedding, at which he was my best man, on the right. We’ve come a long way since ‘95. Winking smile Since Robin comes to visit us in America pretty much every year, even though I am petrified to fly, we figured it was definitely our turn to head over there.

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I return from Switzerland on Friday, June 28th and will most likely resume blogging on Tuesday, July 2nd. So until that time, Happy Stalking! Smile

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