The Secrets of Switzerland, Pt. 1

Encounters with Absinthe, Walnut Oil, and Cheese Robots in the Canton of Vaud.

Last summer I arrived for a six-week residency at the Fondation Michalski, an institution dedicated to literature, in the foothills of Switzerland’s Jura Mountains. I was there to write two crucial chapters of The Lost Supper, my book on the deep history of food, which will be published this September. On the flight over, I’d sworn to myself that I wa…