Fondue – Types Of Fondue And Restaurants That Serve It
Several years ago, I worked for a company that had a corporate office in Belgium, and some Belgian employees came and visited our local office on a business trip. As I was chatting with one of them, the subject of fondue came up. I offhandedly mentioned this favorite fondue restaurant of mine, and raved about the delicious chocolate fondue dessert.
Across his face came a look of incredulous horror. He had the same expression I must have had when I saw spam sushi in Hawaii for the first time. For him, the only proper fondue was cheese fondue, and a chocolate fondue was just a wrong, unnatural thing. Any notions of Americans being a savage, uncultured and decadent people must have been confirmed in his eyes.
Nevertheless, we have chocolate fondue, and I am forever grateful for it. Specifically, we have Konrad Egli to thank, a Swiss(!) chef who created it for New Yorks Chalet Swiss restaurant in 1964. He had earlier already started to popularize the more traditional fondue through his restaurant by featuring both the cheese style and the method of cooking meat cubes in hot oil (Fondue...