One of my travel habit that I try to stick to when visiting new places is to try out the local cuisine and if possible, I’d stay away from conventional locale like fast food chain or Asian food (unless I’m in Asia of course ) whenever I can.

I don’t have picky taste buds and this makes it even easier for me to survive in a foreign country, unless of course you travel with someone like Thorsten who’s choosy about food. Sshhhh…don’t tell him .

Well, what’s the point of traveling and not trying out the local cuisine, right? It’s like a missing a part of my travel itinerary. So what is the most prominent food coming from Switzerland that you can think of? Uhmm…for me, the first thought that flash into my mind is cheese fondue the Swiss way! If you are a cheese lover, then this dish is a MUST-TRY when visiting Switzerland.
What’s the difference between a normal cheese fondue and the original from Switzerland, you may ask. The most notable different is that the original Swiss cheese fondue has a strong taste of alcohol (white wine/brandy) in it. After eating half way through the meal (on an empty stomach), my face started to grow red due to the alcohol! My instinct told me that there really is quite some amount of alcohol in it , however not to an extent that you’ll get drunk from it.
The traditional cheese fondue is eaten with plain white bread. You see the huge bucket of white bread in the first picture? However the restaurants do offer quite a variety of ‘extras’ to come with it. Like cheese fondue with pepper, or white mushroom or even meat. The more ‘extras’ you order to come with it, the more it’ll cost you of course .

We were deciding between peppers or white mushrooms and I decided on peppers. I was expecting this kind of pepper —->>>>>
to be dipped into the fondue. And to my astonishment, the peppers that arrived are just raw peppercorns! Duh, they should have just write peppercorns on their menu. To eat them, you have to throw them into the fondue and the taste of the cheese was surprisingly good with these spicy peppercorns. However I couldn’t finish half the cheese in the pot and luckily Thorsten is born to eat cheese . So he gobbled up the rest of it.

My verdict? Two thumbs up for the Swiss cheese fondue!