Osteria OTTO

Stefano Corrado and Maria Ventola of ANNA open their second restaurant a few steps off Schaffhauserplatz — a 60-seat modern osteria for handmade pasta and Italian and Swiss wine, meant for more often than once a month.

Where ANNA near Milchbuck is the restaurant you save up for, OTTO is built for the evenings in between — Corrado's own line is that you go to one once a month and to the other far more often. The card is à la carte first, with pasta in starter or main sizes: wild boar ravioli in red wine with Parmigiano (32/42), truciolotti with Gambero Rosso tartare, lemon and toasted crumbs (34/44), and a carbonara, alongside vitello tonnato, mortadella from Macelleria Savigni, and guinea fowl with beetroot and sage zabaione (49). Ravioli and bread are made in house every day from Molino Pasini flour; the rest of the pasta comes from the Zaccagni manufactory in Abruzzo. At dinner the whole table can hand the choosing over to a menu sorpresa of three courses (95) or four (115).

The room was a corner pub. The pizza oven at its centre stays, but not for pizza — it gets fired up in winter for bread and slow braises, Zürich having, as Corrado puts it, pizzerias enough. The kitchen is run day to day by Christian Kiniger, most recently at Josef, who cooked alongside Corrado at Aurora; Corrado still writes the menus and moves between the two restaurants, three minutes apart by scooter. From Wednesday to Friday there is a weekly quick lunch: a salad with meat or fish, or a vegetarian pasta, always with a house soup.