U.S Campus Life A cheesy winter By Masako Yamada	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
チーズ料理満喫の冬 Swissotelのフォンデュ。

Although Boston hasn't seen as much snow this winter as it has in the past, the days are plenty cold. This kind of weather naturally causes one to crave rich, comforting foods. Lately, I've been finding myself daydreaming about foods like beef stew and chocolate cake . . . and fondue.

Fondue is the national dish of Switzerland. It involves dipping small morsels of food into a pot of bubbling cheese sauce set in the middle of a table. The Swissotel, an international hotel chain, in Boston serves fondue during the winter and many loyal customers look forward to the start of the fondue season each year. The Boston branch has been especially successful in promoting the concept. In fact, the fondue is so popular in Boston that the hotel has four or five different kinds on the menu during the winter.

Apparently, there was a fondue boom in the United States about 30 years ago, and many new brides amassed collections of fondue pots as wedding gifts. They were often quite fancy so that they could be used for parties. One of my roommates told me that her mother still has one such pot made of copper. The fondue trend has long since disappeared, however, and I myself have never eaten Swiss fondue until this winter.

After I tried the traditional Swiss cheese fondue and the Swiss chocolate fondue at the Swissotel, I felt I understood why Bostonians have embraced this dish. Melted cheese and melted chocolate are both very familiar, but very rich. I don't know about other people, but I don't like to eat intellectually challenging food during the winter. There are only two basic ingredients in a fondue — cheese and wine or chocolate and cream — so one can enjoy a simple meal without the intrusion of extraneous "interesting" touches.

One can argue that anybody can melt together a few ingredients and that fondue isn't really a restaurant meal. I agree that the concept is ridiculously simple, and that one can easily make fondue at home. However, I think Swissotel Boston has figured out that they are selling a dining experience and not just a meal.

Typically, Western-style eating involves placing individual servings of food in front of each diner. At home, it's common to eat "family-style," where large platters of food are placed in the middle of the table and family members serve themselves. However, this is not the case at restaurants. At casual restaurants, people can share little tastes of each others' dinners, but even then, it's not common to stick one's fork into another person's plate. At more formal restaurants, diners usually stay strictly within one's own "territory" on the table.

All such boundaries break down when fondue is served. People think nothing of sticking their forks into a communal pot. For some reason, this leads to more intimate conversation. When the weather is cold, not only do people crave comforting food, I think they also crave human interaction.

Fondue is similar in spirit to shabu shabu and other Asian nabe dishes, and I think people enjoy these dishes for similar reasons. I recently saw a cookbook referring to the different kinds of Asian hot pots as "fondues." One of the fondues at the Boston Swissotel is actually a Chinese variation of shabu shabu. The name is slightly misleading, since fondue means "to melt," and these dishes do not involve any kind of melted food. However, the joys of communal eating are the same.

There are lots of little games associated with fondue. For instance, if one drops one's tidbit in the bubbling pot, one must treat the entire table to a bottle of wine . . . or else run around the room barefoot! Needless to say, fondue is not meant for the single diner. More than anything, it's an excuse for a group of people to come together and enjoy a warm meal, far removed from the outside cold.

Now, if shabu shabu is called a fondue, what will they think of next? Will yakiniku be called "grilled fondue"? Will kushi-katsu be called "fried fondue"?

Shukan ST: Jan. 25, 2002

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