About Us

Swiss Global Dining was conceived of by Amanda Rivkin Häsler. Amanda has worked for US and European media and received grants from the Fulbright Program and the National Geographic Society. She has covered social and political issues such as pipelines, police torture as well as the food chain from farm to public school cafeteria and has lived in several countries across Eastern Europe.

Amanda’s hometown Chicago and the surrounding suburban area have a population roughly the size of Switzerland. After moving to Switzerland, one of the things Amanda realized she missed most was being able to taste the world at different ethnic restaurants. Her mother is a retired chef at the Four Seasons and her paternal grandfather was a grocer in the old and new worlds. Growing up, food was about sharing cultures. 

Her partner, Georg Häsler, also known as "Mr. Swiss Global Dining" by some social media followers, was a television journalist for SRF, Swiss German public television, for twenty years before taking on the role of military and security politics correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland’s newspaper of record. He previously worked as a correspondent in the Balkans and even as a producer on the reality show, “Traversagna.”

Georg’s favorite foods are prosciutto crudo, bresaola and risotto Milanese. His first language may be Bern Deutsch but his soul, which runs through his stomach, is southern and Italian.  He credits his grandparents and their home in Ticino with providing him a moral compass and a taste for life.

Our editor, Kieran Burke, had his first encounter with food with a decent level of preparation back in 1999, when he worked as a waiter for two weeks at a popular coffee shop in the leafy suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa before handing in his apron. The day he did so, they were wheeling in a piano to entertain guests and as a budding pianist, he did an on the spot audition which led to a stint playing piano for dinner guests.

Multitalented Kieran would go on to work at La Colombe under head chef Franck Dangereux in Cape Town, a mainstay of the South African culinary scene that pulls in the who's who from around the world and also places frequently in the top 100 restaurants in the world. Kieran now works as an editor and news writer covering everything but food, which is how he and Amanda met.