The Cosmopolitan Blog

I’ve lived in Switzerland for many years, and I truly believe that if there is a heaven, that’s what it looks like (ok, minus the city of Zurich, there’s nothing heavenly about it), but the rest, the mountains, the lakes, the snow, the quaint little villages and chalets, the trains, the chocolates, the watches (actually, i don’t think there’s watches in heaven…)

Two of the most famous dishes in Switzerland are Fondue and Raclette, the first is the most popular, but i’ve always preferred the latter.

So now here i am in Montreal, a city with some of the most amazing restaurants, and i am pleasantly surprised to find that there are a lot of restaurants that serve Fondue, and they’re pretty close to those found in Switzerland, there’s the cheese ones, the Chinese one where you cook your own meat, the chocolate ones… So, after a few years of innocently enjoying swiss fondues in montreal in a couple of great restaurants, one day, I suddenly decided to actually read the menu, and to my amazement, i find that they serve raclette too!

Side note, at this point, I have to explain what my expectations were, by telling you what a swiss raclette is. So, imagine this really, really big round cheese that you cut in half, and the “open” side, you stick under a special raclette grill. The inside part starts melting and bubbling, and then, the chef (well, this is the swiss version of a barbecue, so in switzerland, it would just be the dad of the house probably) scrapes off the melting part that falls like a little puddle into your plate. You put a few little boiled new potatoes on the plate, as well as a few of those tiny little green pickles and tiny round white pickled onions, and you eat it by drapping your cheese over your potatoes. The puddle of cheese that had landed on your plate was little, because, just like a barbecue, the point is that you are supposed to keep going back for more, i’ve seen people go back 15+ times. Also, no good swiss host would go without telling you that you should only eat this while accompanied with a good swiss or german white wine, and to never, never gulp down large amounts of iced water, because with all the melted cheese in your tummy, it probably won’t be pretty sight later on…
So raclette is a very social thing in Switzerland, and even if it’s served in a restaurant, usually, they have the raclette machine, it always upholds the tradition of getting up and being served the next “puddle”, and it always comes with potatoes, pickles and onions…

So, back in Canada, here I am, waiting for my raclette, wondering where it is i have to go to get my next portion… and then this HUGE plate is brought in front of me… And it’s completely covered from edge to edge with thick melted cheese that seems to be drapped over something, and after investigation, i find that it’s creamy sliced potatoes, meat, mushrooms and a lot of other stuff, i think there may even have been a vegetable or two… and there’s definitely no puddle, it’s more like one entire industrial-size cheese on a plate! The problem you ask? Well, after 5 minutes of slowly working through this mass of cheese, it’s really no longer light and melted… and with all the meat and cream, i’m feeling sick and i’m not even 1/4 of the way through…

I thought maybe it was someone in the kitchen getting creative, but when i asked a work colleague the next day, he said, yes, that’s what raclette is… *sigh* So it appears that raclette means different things to different people… Raclette “à la Suisse” is definitely one of my guilty pleasures, the Canadian version on the other hand, hmmm… well… ’nuff said!