Chur’s Old Town has a fair range of places to eat, many of them offering the classic regional dish of Bündnerfleisch, prime beef air dried in an open attic or under the eaves of a barn and sliced paper-thin in an aromatic Bündnerteller – a carefully presented plate of cold meats. You’ll also find Bündnerfleisch taking centre-stage in Bündner Gerstensuppe, a creamy barley soup with vegetables. With hunting still very popular in the countryside all around, you’ll also see plenty of game on autumn menus, including stews of deer or chamois. Another local speciality is Passugger mineral water, bottled in Passugg a couple of kilometres south; however, at least while staying in Chur itself, Passugger is not worth paying for, since it flows from every tap and street fountain in the town.

There’s a big self-service Migros diner behind the station at Gäuggelistrasse 28 (closed Sun). Controversa, Steinbruckstrasse 1 (closed Sun lunch), is a bright, modern restaurant with an excellent salad buffet and plenty of light pasta meals with veggie options (Fr.15–20), while the Chinese Han Kung, Rabengasse 6 (closed Mon), has three-course lunch menus for well under Fr.20. Two excellent places for top-quality regional cooking are the Rebleuten (see “Accommodation”; closed Sat lunch & Sun), with menus from Fr.15 served in its atmospheric wood-panelled restaurant; and the Stern (also see “Accommodation”), probably slightly the better of the two, with menus around Fr.20. Right beside the Obertor at the southwestern corner of the Old Town is the Alten Zollhaus, Malixerstrasse 1 (081/252 33 98), with plain, hearty meals served downstairs in its cosy Stübli from Fr.11, and more formal dining in the upstairs restaurant, from Fr.20 or so.

As the location of the canton’s only matriculation college, Chur has loads of pre-university students packing the dozens of bars around the Obertor: Street Café, Grabenstrasse 47, is most popular, but Rock Me, Goldgasse 3, runs a close second. The convivial American Sports Bar is at Rabengasse 7, with – as you’d expect – TVs showing ice hockey and American football. Some 1.5km west of the Old Town, in a business-park area of furniture showrooms and petrol stations (bus #1 to Agip), is the much-vaunted Giger Bar, Comercialstrasse 23 (closed Sun). Owned by Swiss-born Hollywood special-effects designer H.R. Giger, the bar is kitted out in the style of his greatest creation, Alien, with sleek, skeletal chairs, black decor, and a limbless, writhing female torso hoisted above the bar like a flag. Oddly enough, though, if you go expecting to plug into an exciting cutting-edge subculture, you’ll be disappointed: despite the decor, it’s an utterly ordinary after-work bar for local business folk with its radio tuned to a light-melodies channel.