Fondue - Swiss, Swedish and Japanese

We had a period about 20 years ago when fondue was very popular. We were a group of friends who took turns inviting each other to fondue night. As a rule, cut-up chicken and pork meat was served, along with various sauces and salads, as well as bread or rolls. I remember it as very good and cosy evenings 🙂.

We had cheese fondue with a friend in Switzerland about 20 years ago and he gave us a pot for it when we got married. Good but mighty. Since the youngest son loves melted cheese, we had raclette last weekend (equipment for that was another wedding gift). Pickled onions, cornichons, boiled potatoes and bread. Mighty.

Sure, I've had fondue - many times and all varieties. Love fondue! To sit and fiddle with the food for a long time in the company of happy friends is wonderful 🙂 .

However, cheese fondue is not my favourite. Too basic somehow, monotonous. I like the Swiss raclette much better. Unfortunately, my raclette iron broke and I haven't found a new one (not that I've been looking much lately 😉 ).

For many years, fondue was a New Year tradition for us and our friends. A wonderful way to socialise for a long time over a piece of food. Nowadays we usually have fondue one evening on our ski trips.

At home, we have recently been using broth instead of oil. Less cheese, but unfortunately not as good as with oil.

Wow. Now I got really hungry for fondue! 😀

I've also eaten fondue in different flavours, so maybe it's a generational thing. In the seventies, "everyone" had fondue pots and it was a popular way to serve dinner. We had different kinds of meat, onions and vegetables in broth, sometimes oil. The best part was the sauces, different types of mayonnaise. We also ate cheese fondue often, but more as a family. There was (is?) ready-made vaccine-packed fondue from Switzerland that you just heated up, very good. Making it yourself is not easy. I have eaten "real" cheese fondue in Switzerland and in the French Alps and it is really good! Here in France we've resumed raclette - it's common here and the raclette cheese is on all the cheese shelves, plus pre-packaged charcuterie in the right mix of ham and sausages. Served here with a special potato kept warm on the raclette iron, the melted cheese is poured over it and, in addition to cornichon, there are often olives on the side. However, sukiyaki is the number one favourite (as Japanese food is at the top of our food list). It's expensive because the meat has to be of very high quality - it's sliced very thin - and the other ingredients are also of high quality. The big secret is the broth, where every restaurant and family has its own recipe. You dip what you have cooked in the broth in the beaten egg and then put it for a while in your rice bowl where you pour in some soy and eat it together with the flavoured rice. With chopsticks of course! Yum!!! And healthy - mildly cooked and with so many good vegetables. Here in France there aren't many Japanese restaurants, the French don't like raw fish even though sushi is becoming popular. So every time we are in Stockholm we have a big family dinner at Samuraj at Karlaplan, which is our favourite place. It's Stockholm's oldest Japanese restaurant and it's totally cool, it looks just like it did thirty years ago. The Japanese go here themselves and the food is in a class of its own, especially the sukiyaki. Recommended as an experience. Includes purchase of both raclette iron and fondue pot!

The fondue pot had a prominent place in the kitchen in the 1970s. Then there was a lot of it. A nice pick and mix meal to eat when you had guests. At that time I ate meat, so it was the most common. It was important that the meat was of high quality. However, I did not like cheese fondue.

I grew up in the sweet 80s when fondue was very popular. Oil was used to cook different types of meat. There was only one restaurant called Elysee in Malmö and it was always fully booked. You got French fries as a side dish and all these delicious sauces served on a rotating disc. In the 90s, they replaced the oil with broth. It wasn't the same at all. I have also tried cheese fondue. Never have I tried Japanese fondue. It sounds very exciting ?

As a 60+ person, the fondue pot was a modern and obvious wedding gift in the mid-70s and some of our friends of the same age had dusted off theirs when we were there the other year. Now it was broth in the pot instead of oil, but just as good and nice.
During high school, even a little earlier, we ate cheese fondue and drank Diamant (white wine for 4:75).
I also think the fondue pot is having a renaissance. Tasty and enjoyable!

We are sitting in a restaurant in the French Alps, a few kilometres south of Grenoble. Those of us who have no command of French are usually at a loss when they don't speak English either. We ordered a meat dish that we thought was a fried steak. In comes a giant Foundue pot and a large plate of meat. It was good anyway. We have a couple of Foundue pots at home, so at least we knew what to do. It was a fun memory of French cuisine.

So fun to read about everyone's different experiences! Hope it all comes back. A few comments on what I think I know: sukiaki is just that and is not part of any fondue class even though it resembles it in terms of preparation. As for the last description of raclette, it sounds good but not like classic raclette. On the hot plate at the top of a raclette iron, you keep pre-cooked, unpeeled potatoes warm. In the small bowls tucked under the top plate, you put your own slices of the special raclette cheese (that's why it's called raclette). Once melted, it is poured over the potatoes and eaten hot with the cold cuts, which are thin slices of various types of charcuterie: salami, serrano ham, etc. The meat is not fried but eaten cold. And with it you serve small pickles, preferably pickled onions as someone wrote, and olives. No sauces are included, it is the hot cheese that is the "thing". If you can't find raclette cheese in Sweden, try some Danish-style cheese, such as Svarta Sara or, for that matter, Den gamle Ole. Bon Appetit!!!

Found this post now. Can recommend nice fonudeboden in stockholm on vanadisvägen near vanadisplan. You will not be disappointed if you go there!

I was previously with a man from Switzerland. He taught me a lot about cheese fondue and raqlette. We had both a fondue pot, one for cheese and one for chocolate. (I am a chocolate lover?.) And a raqlette iron. Less "Swedish" variant.
We went to Switzerland once a year. At all the parties there and also in most restaurants in the mountains you eat fondue and raqlette. Also "Filet de perche" is a classic in Switzerland. (Small perch with french fries.) It is mostly those dishes you eat. At least on the French side of Switzerland.
In Switzerland they don't have many accessories for the cheese fondue. Mostly bread and wine.
At home in Sweden, my then partner and I ate cheese fondue almost every Friday. Like Swedes eat tacos. But then we had prosciutto, pickles, cornichons, bread, wine, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, capers, other sausages / hams etc.
We mostly ate raqlette in the summer time, because you should have fresh potatoes with it. We also had similar accessories to the cheese fondue. It is SO good! I usually eat a lot of Bregott too. Then it becomes like a sauce.
Now I no longer live with a Swiss. But have of course bought a fondue pot. So we eat cheese fondue sometimes. Often we buy ready-made cartons in the kitchen counter at Ica, where the cheese mixture is ready already.
Mum has also gone mad for fondue and Raqlette. As well as the rest of the family and friends. So she has bought a raqlette iron. When she visits me, she DEMANDS cheese fondue, otherwise she won't come. And so we eat raqlette when we are with her. Good distribution. All our friends love it too. So we have influenced many?
After cheese fondue, we usually do chocolate fondue. Then you are full and satisfied!
Usually we use Toblerone with a little whipped cream in it. And dip a lot of strawberries, meringues, melon, pineapple, mashmallows, etc.
It's a great evening menu.
And from time to time we go to Fondue Boden in Stockholm. It is really to be recommended. You can eat seafood and meat fondue there too?.
I'm glad you brought up the subject.