Le Palais Oriental

April 1964: the Rolling Stones in front of the site

Long before the Palais Oriental, the site had already seen rock go by: on 20 April 1964 the Rolling Stones gave, at the Montreux Casino, their first appearance outside Britain, for the programme “Ready, Steady, Go!” recorded as part of the Rose d’Or. A photograph taken that month shows the band on the quays, on the very spot the restaurant occupies today.

“Le Hoggar”: a Moorish palace of 1960

The building is one of the most unexpected houses in Switzerland: a small oriental palace set facing the lake. According to the Vaud cantonal architectural survey, this Moorish-style “Hoggar” was built in 1960 by the architect Charles Jeanneret for Belroul Raha Ahmed, an Algerian politician who settled in Switzerland in 1957. The interior was adorned with stucco and polychrome ceramics made by Moroccan craftsmen.

Too large for a single family, the house first served as a guesthouse. Many on the Riviera still call it “le Hoggar” today, after that massif of the Algerian Sahara.

From the Caspian Sea to the Montreux quays

The soul of the place is its owner, Shahriar Gharibi. Born in 1952 in a village of north-western Iran, near the Caspian Sea and the Azeri border, he grew up in a modest family of eleven children. Thanks to an uncle who cooked for the imperial family, he reached Tehran and its hotel school, then the ski resort of Shemshak, where he met a young Swiss woman working at the embassy in Tehran.

He followed her to Paris in 1981 and found his calling: head of caviar and gastronomy at the Maison de l’Iran, on the Champs-Élysées, “you can take the boy out of the Caspian Sea, but you can’t take the Caspian Sea out of the boy”, as the Weltwoche puts it. The couple then settled in Switzerland; after a hard start in Bern, he found a modest position at the Montreux Palace.

A kilometre from the hotel, the little Moorish palace on the quays awaited him. He renovated it and reopened it in 1988 as “le Palais”; only after its enlargement, in 1992, did it become “Le Palais Oriental” (immobilier.ch ↗; Weltwoche ↗).

Arabian-Nights cuisine, a carpet gallery

The menu brings together the specialities of Iran, Lebanon and Morocco, tabbouleh, shirazi salad, biryani, stuffed vine leaves, which several critics have ranked among the finest Persian tables in Europe. True to his Caspian roots, Gharibi is also a caviar importer licensed by the Swiss authorities: under the name “Caviar du Palais”, he supplies hotels, restaurants and private clients across Switzerland, and serves these sturgeon eggs at his table.

On the upper floor and at the Galerie du Palais, rue du Quai 10, the house exhibits painters and calligraphers, and keeps a rare collection of Persian carpets, including superb silk rugs by great contemporary masters (official website ↗).

A haunt of celebrities

Crowned heads, actors, singers, politicians: many have tasted the house specialities. In 2015, during the talks on the Iranian nuclear programme held in Switzerland, the American negotiator John Kerry made it his base. Gharibi gave Lady Gaga, a fan, a collection by the 11th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam; his guests have also included the choreographer Maurice Béjart and Reza Pahlavi.

The master of the house nonetheless stays discreet about most of his illustrious clients, keeping only a few photographs tucked away, out of sight, in his first-floor office (immobilier.ch ↗).

Two Persians of Montreux

Le Palais Oriental also crossed the path of Freddie Mercury. The Queen singer may never have set foot in the restaurant, but he had met Shahriar Gharibi at the Montreux Palace and taken an interest in one of his Persian carpets. He invited him to his home in Territet: both men were of Persian origin, and that is what had brought them together.