Carouge: Unwind in Geneva's hippest suburb

Hop on an orange tram from downtown Geneva and rattle past the opera house, around the open space of Plainpalais and across the Arve River, milky-blue with limestone from the French Alps. When the tram doors clunk open, alight in Carouge. The ride only takes 15 minutes, yet you're in a slightly different world. Prim Geneva has become unbuttoned. Gone is the grey-toned Calvinist city. Facades are pastel pretty and fountains splash. In a Europe of endless regional variations, you've edged just that bit closer to the Mediterranean.

Geneva is infused with the killjoy ethos of Jean Calvin, the mid-16th-century fanatic who bequeathed the city its watchmaking industry, tidiness and bylaws. From the walls of its stripped-down old town, canon still scowl towards the unkempt wantonness of French Savoy. That's where Carouge was founded in 1786, just beyond Geneva's borders. Savoy was a trans-alpine state with a capital in Turin and dukes who were also kings of Sardinia. Its architects worked in the Italianate style and never bothered with city walls. Unlike Geneva, Carouge was an open city. Catholics and Jews mingled, Protestants snuck across the border for conviviality. Carouge did well, piggybacking on Geneva across the river even as it defiantly clanged its Catholic church bells.

Carouge became a part of Geneva in 1816, which had joined Switzerland the year before. It retains its own charms and remains the city's relaxed alter-ego. When I was growing up in Geneva, teenage schoolkids went to Carouge to drink beer, smoke and scuffle. In a small city, it seemed distant. It was louche, laidback and seedy. That has changed. Carouge has become spruce and trendy but, as you sit in its cafes under plane trees and gossip, you could think yourself, if not quite in Italy, at least in France.

This is where Geneva comes on long summer evenings, to sit outside and have a drink. During the day, workers in turtlenecks sit behind plate glass in the offices of design studios. Carouge has become hip. It has an independent cinema and an art space called Flux Laboratory that requires a few strong martinis to appreciate. Le Chat Noir is one of the best live-music nightclubs in town.

Some things haven't changed. There has been a farmers' market in Place du Marche for 200 years. On Wednesdays and Saturdays soil-stained growers sell borlotti beans, punnets of strawberries and mottled pears that the Swiss bake into pastry rissoles. The square also has a pretty peach-coloured Catholic church and a fountain personifying the Arve River in the form of a nymph with a wardrobe malfunction. The bare breasts are certainly French; when Switzerland is personified by Helvetia, her toga is always decently draped.

The fountain in the adjacent square, Place du Temple, is rather Gothic and ecclesiastical. The square also has a plain Protestant temple added after Carouge became a part of Geneva. Still, Place du Temple redeems itself with a cafe-bakery (Boulangerie Wolfisberg) that would have horrified Calvin with its wanton cream pastries and homemade gingerbread ice-cream.

Another of my favourite indulgences, Chocolat Pascoet, is a short walk away on Rue Saint-Joseph (you can bet that many Carouge streets are named for Catholic saints just to taunt the Calvinists). Philippe Pascoet, who's actually French, has a very un-Swiss way of talking about this creations. "Rosemary makes chocolate sing," he says. "Ginger peel is discreet but intense at the same time, like a love affair. Passionfruit awakens your tastebuds."

Some of Pascoet's truffles come in odd but exhilarating flavours such as coriander or sage. Like any good Carouge resident he disquiets Genevans by collaborating with restaurant chefs on outlandish dishes such as chocolate-dusted foie gras and smoked duck carpaccio with chocolate. I'd rather stick to his appropriately named Addictions nibbles: pistachio, almond and orange embedded in white chocolate; raisins soaked in Sauternes and enrobed in dark chocolate.