An Italian menu with a Moroccan accent
At Mama & Zita the cooking is Italian and the chef is Neapolitan: antipasti, pasta, wood-fired pizza, Mediterranean fish. There is a Moroccan and Middle Eastern accent too — hummus and falafel on the menu, and a couscous among the specials the day we went for lunch. It comes from the owner, Younes Ouldammar, a Swiss-Moroccan who named the place after his mother and his aunt Zita.
Younes trained at EHL, the Lausanne hospitality school, and spent several years in luxury goods before returning to restaurants. He and his wife opened in January 2020, three months before restaurants were ordered shut, and it has since become an institution in the Nations neighborhood.
What we ate
Wild red tuna alla Trapanese, stracciata di burrata with summer fruit, falafel Zita, melanzana croccante — the crisp fried aubergine — and the Amalfitana citrus-marinated salmon. Then linguine alle vongole veraci and grilled sea bream on crushed lemon potatoes. To finish, a trompe-l'œil lemon: a lemon and white chocolate tart with warm caramel coulis.
Everything we ate was excellent, and all of it refined: each plate rested on a very simple idea, executed extremely well, and each was served generously. The menu follows the seasons and turns over every three months; at lunch there are daily specials, always with a vegetarian option. Burrata to falafel, vongole to sea bream: a proper journey, with something for every taste.
A big dining room furnished piece by piece
The room is large and warm, and the couple furnished it themselves, buying the pieces one by one from private owners — a sideline passion that became the decor. Off to one side, a private lounge seating nine can be booked for a meal away from the main room: a vintage bookcase, paintings, closer to someone's sitting room than to a restaurant. The restaurant is also available for private hire, in part or in full, for up to a hundred guests.
The terrace, set back from the traffic around the Nations, is a small oasis. Later in the day it is the place for pizza and antipasti to share, with a thoroughly Italian cocktail list that runs from spritz to negroni sbagliato.
