Food, Glorious Foooood!

As I'm sure you can tell by the title of this entry, I've decided to devote a post to food (Hopefully you have Oliver! in your head now too! ).

Eating food in Switzerland has been an interesting endeavor. Not the actual act of eating mind you (that part is pretty easy), but the preparation of food has been more or less confusing.

Allow me to show you a few examples.

[image: the back of a mini pizza box. Click to enlarge.]

Note the different languages written on the box! In case I don't understand the French explanation, I can try my luck with German or Italian! My Spanish roommate, Susana, does this more than she admits I think. French and Italian are very closely related to Spanish. ( I once heard if you knew French and Spanish, you (essentially) knew Italian and vice versa for the other languages. I question the accuracy of that statement though...).

Difficulty of Preparation: Easy.


[image: the mystery directions box. Click to enlarge.]

Here's one that stumped me. This was one of the first food items I ended up buying at a small convenience store on a Sunday. I didn't really take a look at the directions (pictured on the right) until the other day when I decided to prepare it. What does it all mean??? Am I supposed to soak the package for 15 minutes in water before I stab it and shoot it with laser beams set to 650W? I'm pretty sure this does NOT go in my oven because my oven only goes up to 250ºC... but if not the oven then what? The microwave? Is 650W high heat? Medium heat? Why do I have to put it in water??? Suggestions anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?

Difficulty of Preparation: I'm still trying to figure it out.


Since food in Switzerland is rather pricey, I eat most of my meals at home by myself or with my roommates. I was able to eat out with Susana the other night though! Her program (she goes to the Université de Lausanne for her language training) held a museum and a dinner get together on Monday night and she asked if I would like to go. The plan was to tour the Musée Historique de Lausanne (Lausanne History Museum) and then eat at a restaurant that highlighted Swiss cuisine.

I'm not going to lie, I was in it for the food.

The museum was interesting- albeit, short because we only had about 45 minutes to an hour to tour it. Afterwards we went next door to the Cathedrale (I'll post pictures of this in a later post- my roommates and I had toured it over the weekend). Finally, around 7PM it was time for dinner! We (about 8 of us) headed over to Café de l'Evêché where a table was already set up for us. We had all ordered drinks and were looking over the menu when about 7 more people joined our group. I had one item on my mind for dinner that night: Fondue.

That's right. Cheese. Fondue is a specialty in Switzerland and I quickly understood why. It's amazing. There are a ton of different options to chose from and when they bring it out to you, it's in a huge bowl over a small flame. One person can't eat a vat of fondue by themselves- which is why I was lucky that there were at least 10 other people who also ordered it :) We all chose "Fondue au Fromage Moitié et Moitié" which meant it was made of half strong cheese and half bland cheese. It was delicious.




[image: thumbs up!]

This is my roommate Susana :) I really enjoy hanging out with her- we giggle a lot










[image: huge bowl of fondue!]

Since the bowl of fondue was cut off on the first image, I had the person across from me take our picture again. :P






When ordering fondue in Switzerland, the waiter will charge the fondue by the person- not by the pot. You do get an unlimited amount of bread to go with it though. They also have a saying that if you drop/lose your bread in the fondue, you have to buy a bottle of wine for the table.

I lost my bread.

Twice.


But luckily no one held me to this standard :)


Et Voilà! My experiences so far with the food in Switzerland!