Cheeeeeese...

Cheese is at home here. The best way to taste that is to experience the traditional, deep-rooted specialties Switzerland has to offer, for example in Zuerich. After a day of exploring bridges bridging the Sihl, churches with varying sized clock faces, and brigthly colored glass windows, photographing people and places while roasting in the much hotter sun than we had expected while drinking cool beers, we went to Swiss Chuchi, the "swiss Kitchen", to indulge in Cheese Fondue and Raclette.

The cheese fondue reminded me in flavor very much on what I had tasted 10 years earlier, when my at that time roommate from the swiss canton Wallis made the fondue the way he had eaten it growing up - rubbing the bottom of a clay pot with garlic, mixing starch and kirschwasser (cherry schnaps), grating raclette cheese and appenzeller, if I remember correctly, half and half, and melting the cheese in the clay pot over medium heat, adding starch-schnaps to bind it and stirring patiently, continuously, vigorously, and yes, arm-tiringly. At Swiss Chuchi, you'll be served your clay pot on a little heater full of perfectly molten, creamy cheese happiness, a basket of bread cubes, and a fork to pick up the bread and stir the cheese with it and ... indulge. Yes, I know, I am repeating myself. :)


From what I could find online, I understood that the fondue here, called a traditional Waadtlaender fondue, is made using Greyerzer of various ages. It tasted really good, and like the home-made cheese fondue I knew. There were lots of yummy garlic slices in it as I noticed when finally reaching the pot's bottom, and the "Nonne" was very nice, but just a little crispy as my flame went out a little too early. I could not finish my fondue, the portion is clearly too generous for my stomach (surprising)..
As for the raclette, the restaurant is using the modern raclette approach (here I found a few more options to buy), a little electrical raclette oven with small pans to lay a slice of raclette cheese in and let it melt in the oven - my friend became more and more courageous at extending the cheese melting duration and finally reached a level of bubbliness and light caramelization reminding me of the origins of this dish - imagine the shepherds up on the alm, having a bag of potatoes, and maybe some pickles, and all the dairy they can get from their cattle for the whole summer. They boiled some potatoes, put a quarter cheese round on a stick, held it over the fire and scraped the molten yumminess onto the potatoes. The cheese must have been creamy, maybe lighlty burned at the rinds, dripping of the chunk and smelling just like that raclette cheese from this little raclette oven..
Swiss chuchi serves raclette with a cute Jute-bag of boiled potatoes, pickle slices, pickled little baby corn and mushrooms, and pearl onions. It can be ordered with various meat add-ons - my friend opted for rabbit, that comes in thin slices that can be fried right there at the table on the griddle part of the little raclette oven.
We were, as one would expect, sleepy after this meal and had to take and extended cheese-processing nap...