Rain lashed the bus as it began its final descent into Geneva. In the distance, lights along the near shore of Lake Geneva blinked and smeared with each stroke of the windshield wipers.
As bad as the weather was, at least it had finally stopped snowing. The trip from Paris should have taken a few hours, but with France's railroad workers on strike, we'd had to bushwhack our way to Lyon, through the Rhone-Alps region in Eastern France and into Switzerland, where we'd hoped to get a train. For reasons unknown, Swiss border officials directed the motley crowds pouring in from the west onto buses outside the customs office. "No trains. No trains," the chief official said as his men herded us onto a bus, which then sat idling for two hours while inspectors repeatedly demanded to see each passenger's passport.
The trip to Geneva required several bus changes and several long waits in remote terminals, none of which were heated. The stereotype of Swiss trains always running on time apparently didn't apply to the nation's buses, at least not at this time of year: early January, a few days before the Jan. 6 celebration of Epiphany. We'd left Paris before dawn. We finally arrived in Geneva 15 hours later, just after midnight.
As soon as we arrived, I hailed a taxi. My companion and I had been staying mainly in hostels, but at this hour, and after the day we'd had, I figured it was a good time to splurge. I asked the driver to take us to a small hotel I'd read about in Fodor's travel guide. The hotel appeared to be closed when the cab pulled up in front, but the driver seemed undaunted as he grabbed our luggage and pounded on the front door. Immediately the lobby lights came on and a thin, mustachioed clerk appeared. He bowed and smiled broadly as he escorted us inside.
After we'd checked in, I asked the clerk if there was even a remote chance of getting some food. Again he smiled broadly, nodded and handed me a blank sheet of paper and a pen. "Write down what you'd like," he said. "I will wake the cook."
He must have seen my bewilderment—it was going on 1 a.m.—because he reached out and softly took the pen and paper from my hand. "We'll make you something warm and satisfying. And a bottle of wine," he said.
"I'd prefer beer," I said, hoping I didn't sound ungrateful.
"Please," the clerk said with a look of concern, "wine will be better." He patted his belly and wagged his finger as a warning. "Beer with fondue? No, no."
When we got to the room, I began to worry. The mini-bar was well enough stocked to make waking the cook on our behalf utterly unnecessary. What, I wondered, would they charge us for room service at this hour? As I showered, I wished I'd at least asked the clerk to skip the fondue, a dish I'd never found particularly pleasing.
When I was done showering, clad in one of the hotel's courtesy robes, I rejoined my companion, who was seated at a linen-covered rollaway table in front of the fireplace. The clerk, my friend told me, had lit a fire and turned down the beds while another man, presumably the cook, set the table. On a side table, the cook had arranged several covered dishes: thin slices of steak, a fresh green salad, a small plate of roasted potatoes and a big plate of raw garlic, onions, olives and pickles. In the center of the buffet, he'd placed a small crock that he'd called a "caquelon," containing a fondue and a basket of bread torn, not cut, into small chunks.
"The cook said to call the front desk if we want something else," my friend said, sipping a glass of white wine. "He said he has a wonderful chocolate souffl? if we're interested. And he said to make sure we eat the crust at the end of the fondue. He says it's the best part."
Chuckling at how starkly our circumstances had changed since we'd stepped out of the raw January weather and into this cozy hotel with its unexpectedly attentive night staff, we sat down to our feast.
The food was exceptional. The steak was tender and flavorful, the salad crisp and tangy. But the dish that stood out that night was the fondue.
Over the years, I'd had fondue on a number of special occasions—at Christmas and New Year's parties, at a private party at a ski resort in New Hampshire thrown by a sports magazine where I worked as an editor. At one point or another, all the cooks in my life—my grandmother, mother, sister and wife, among others—had tried their hands at fondue. As much as I love cheese, I'd never found fondue very comforting. Maybe the cook had too heavy a hand with the kirsch or whatever liquor she spiked it with. Or maybe I just wasn't a fan of a hard cheese such as Gruy?re or semi-hard cheeses such as Emmental or Vacherin, the cheeses that are most often used in fondues. Generally, I found fondue too bitter and too heavy to make a full meal of it. To me, fondue was like pat?: a nice, fancy idea that was far too rich, far too much of an acquired taste, for me to really feast on.
The fondue that night in Geneva was like nothing I'd had before or have had since. That fondue had a warm, buttery quality that seemed, at the time and forever in my memory, to capture the earthy essence of cheese—that velvety, creamy taste that turns what is, after all, basically spoiled milk into something worth craving. The flavor wasn't wimpy—plenty sharp enough to stand up to a piece of raw garlic or a pickle—but it didn't have the overpowering sharpness or kirschiness of other fondues I'd had. With a medium dry white wine, the fondue seemed to go down more lightly than others—so lightly we were able to finish off the crock with room left over to nibble on "la religieuse," the thin crust of toasted cheese left on the bottom of the caquelon.
After a good night's sleep, I wandered down to the front desk to see what we were charged for our wee-hour repast and to ask if the cook might tell me about his fondue. The cook and the night clerk had gone home. The day manager looked in his file and pulled out what looked like a bill. We'd been charged 20 Swiss francs—less than $10 U.S.—for a bottle of wine. The meal had been on the house.
*
For the remainder of our trip through Switzerland, into Italy and back to France, my companion and I tried unsuccessfully to reprise our recent fondue experience. Alas, all the others we tried were more like the fondues we'd known before the masterpiece in Geneva. By the time we got to Rome, we were ready to abandon our hunt, sure that the Geneva fondue had been an anomaly, a happy accident. Back in Paris, we had one fondue that came closer than the rest to the one in Geneva—the kirsch taste was toned down, masked, perhaps, by a more pronounced taste of garlic, which is often rubbed on the caquelon before adding the cheese. Unfortunately, we failed to apply the advice we'd received in Geneva with regard to beer and fondue: we washed our Parisian fondue down with champagne, which is gassier than beer, resulting in an unpleasantly heavy feeling that lingered for hours after the meal.
Since that trip to Europe, I have continued trying to find a fondue that lives up to my memory of that unexpected meal in Geneva. I've tried it in my own kitchen and in a few restaurants that specialize in fondue. Even at a pricey place such as The Melting Pot in Boston's Back Bay, I have failed to replicate that long-ago experience. The Melting Pot treats fondue as a culinary theme, putting as much or more emphasis on its chocolate dessert fondues and beef fondues as on the traditional cheese variety.
It's a mystery I may never solve: how did that late-night cook—probably not even the hotel's best cook—make that cheese fondue? I've sometimes wondered if, rather than having what was an exceptional fondue, we were just so cold and tired and hungry that a fairly unexceptional fondue tasted like something special. But here's the thing: more than 20 years down the road, I can still taste that fondue in my mind's palate. And I am sure that, if and when I find another like it, I will know it.
If you have a clue that might help the author solve the mystery of the great Geneva fondue, please drop him a line at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
