I deemed tonight raclette night. Come hell or high water, I was gonna have it. I stopped in at a gift shop earlier for some trinketry and asked where one could enjoy that type of cuisine most deliciously in the STUNNING burg of Interlaken. The pierced, preened, bespectacled and bow-tied associate oh-so-primly informed me that raclette is a “winter dish” and I wouldn’t be able to find it this time of year.
<ahem>
I thank him for his input, narrow my eyes and set my jaw, and take to the streets to find my dairy goodness. A few blocks down, I stroll into a restaurant that has an alpine feel to it, inquire about raclette. THIS guy says they have macaroni and cheese with bacon, which is… close.
<eyebrow>
I tell him that is a distinctly American dish and I want LOCAL, AUTHENTIC Swiss food, specifically raclette. He nods in comprehension and sends me to the Hotel Krebs. “It’s the word for cancer in German.”
I Googled it. It’s totally the word for cancer in German.
SO off I go. It’s not far from the bierhaus-lookin’ place at all, directly across the street from McDonald’s. Beautiful restaurant, well-appointed. There are several groups of people on the patio enjoying meals even though the weather is rainy, blustery, and chilly. I wait at the maitre d’ stand for a moment, where I’m greeted by a young gentleman who asks to seat me. I tell him what I’ve come to eat.
“Oh, that’s not possible. Our raclette dishes are made for two persons.”
<…>
“I have come to Switzerland to eat raclette and I will eat raclette. It will either be here with you or somewhere else, but I’m having it. You decide.”
He reserves my table for 5 p.m. When I arrive, the heating apparatus is already warming on the table. I sit and order raclette natur, which is served with tomatoes, potatoes, pickles, peppers, and PINEAPPLE. When it arrives, it is displayed on a ten-pound hunk of butcher block. There are 200g of cheese on this spread according to the menu, as well as the other accoutrements of this soon-to-be bubbling, molten mess of cheesy incredible-ness.
The server surrounds me with the entirety of my dinner, and I ask her for instructions on how to eat it. “You slice the potatoes, then use this little … um, “thing” to take the cheese out of the little tray and cover the potato. Then you add some pineapple, some peppers maybe. Or bacon. Do you like bacon?”
*MA’AM.*
She departs and returns with, no lie, a cross-section of a TREE that has TEN slices of raw bacon on it. “This is with compliments of the chef. You put these on top [of the warmer]. It is not cooked.” So now I have EIGHT slabs of cheese and TEN slices of bacon, the pork GIFTED from the toqued angel in the kitchen who heard about the American attempting to tackle raclette for two, as well as pickles, tomatoes, potatoes, and a partridge in a pear tree.
I get to work on this smorgasbord, hammering away, experimenting with leaving the cheese on the heat a little longer to get that crunchy burnt amazing around the edges. You know, the kind that causes World War Family Edition if you scrape off more than your fair share from the casserole at holiday get-togethers? MmHMMMM.
In the end, there is a clear victor. And he is wearing SWEATPANTS. Momma Bullard didn’t raise a fool. But now that champion needs a belly rub, a nap, aaaaaaaand probably some dessert a little later.
I love Switzerland. Little old lady…who.