Swiss Food and Fondue in the Lauterbrunnen Valley

Fondue

The earliest documented recipe close to modern cheese fondue appears in a 1699 Zürich cookbook, so the dish is far older than the tourist menus suggest. Its rise to national symbol was deliberate. In the 1930s the Swiss Cheese Union promoted fondue as the national dish to raise cheese consumption, and it used the 1939 New York World's Fair as a showcase.

That long campaign only ended when the Union disbanded in 1999. The classic pot blends alpine cheeses, most often Gruyère, Vacherin Fribourgeois and Emmental. The best-known blend is moitié-moitié, which mixes Gruyère and Vacherin Fribourgeois in equal parts.

Etiquette matters more than newcomers expect. You spear bread on a long fork and swirl it through the pot in a figure-eight, which keeps the cheese moving and stops it from catching on the bottom. Lose your bread off the fork into the pot and tradition says you owe the table a round of drinks, or failing that, a song.

It is a sociable, slow meal, and in the valley it is served everywhere from hotel dining rooms to outdoor pots on guided hikes.

Raclette

Raclette comes from the canton of Valais in the southwest of Switzerland. Melting cheese by a campfire there is attested from 1574, and the French name raclette, from racler, to scrape, became common by 1875. The dish reached a wider public at the 1964 National Exhibition in Lausanne, and it has travelled well beyond Valais since.

Raclette is also the name of the cheese itself, a specific semi-firm variety made for melting. The version called Raclette du Valais carries protected designation of origin, AOP, status, which ties it to its home region. In a restaurant the wheel is set under a heater and the softened surface is scraped onto your plate in waves.

The traditional accompaniments are boiled potatoes, cornichons and pickled onions, and that is honestly all you need. Compared with fondue it is a quieter meal, ordered by the plate rather than shared from one pot, and it is easier for a first-timer because there is no fork etiquette to get wrong. Around Lauterbrunnen you will find raclette-style plates on regional menus in the mountain restaurants rather than as a theatrical centrepiece.

Indian, Bavarian and Swiss at 3,454 m

The operator's own dining page names four very different places at the Jungfraujoch. Restaurant Aletsch Self is the self-service option with an international spread from rice bowls to döner boxes. Restaurant Crystal sits at the other end, serving Swiss and international dishes à la carte with a wine list.

The Pikantus Lounge by Erdinger is a bar pouring Bavarian beer with snacks, and Restaurant Bollywood serves Indian cuisine as a self-service option. So if you came up for fondue, Crystal is the venue to aim for, and the others will feed a mixed group happily. One stop down the mountain the picture narrows.

At Eigergletscher station between Kleine Scheidegg and the Jungfraujoch, Restaurant Eigergletscher serves traditional Swiss cuisine on a panoramic terrace, and the Confiserie Eigergletscher is called by the operator Europe's highest-altitude confectionery. Bergrestaurant Kleine Scheidegg at 2,061 m is Swiss too, with its Röstizza rösti-pizza hybrid, Jungfrau-Bratwürste and Gulaschsuppe. Plan your lunch by station, and check the timetables on our Jungfraujoch and Kleine Scheidegg pages before you commit.

The lesson for a first-time visitor is to match the meal to the station rather than assume every mountain restaurant serves the same menu. A group with mixed tastes does better at the Jungfraujoch, where four kitchens sit under one roof. A group chasing a single Swiss classic, whether that is a Röstizza or a bowl of Gulaschsuppe, does better one stop down at Kleine Scheidegg, where the whole menu commits to one cuisine and one view.

Coop Has the Fondue Mix

Coop is the supermarket chain with a branch in each of the three villages, in Lauterbrunnen, Wengen and Mürren, and the stores sell Swiss cheese and ready-made fondue mix for self-catering. That matters because there is no Migros or Volg in any of these villages, so Coop is the one-stop shop. Pick up a pot of moitié-moitié mix, a bag of bread cubes cut a day old, and some cornichons, and you have a valley-floor dinner for the price of a fraction of one mountain-restaurant fondue.

The Lauterbrunnen store at Bahnhofplatz opens daily from 08:00 to 19:00, while the Wengen and Mürren stores open daily until 18:30, which fits around a day on the lifts. For store locations, addresses and exact hours, see our guide to supermarkets in Lauterbrunnen. None of the three Coop stores publishes a price list online, so treat any figure you hear from another traveller as anecdotal rather than official.

What is confirmed is the mechanism: a car-free village restocks its shelves by rail or cableway, which is the same reason a mountain restaurant fondue costs more than the same pot cooked at home.