Walluc, 1st September

Well, that was the worst meal I’ve had in recent memory.

I didn’t think you could go far wrong with dipping things in melted cheese but Walluc is here to prove otherwise. I had high hopes – suspecting that it might be a rather overlooked gem on Redchurch street, being forsaken for all the hipster places springing up all around. 

It is a ramshackle kind of place, and I’m never entirely sure of its opening hours so I suspected a quirky personality that I could really bond with lay inside. We walked past in June on a First Thursdays walking tour and it was rammed and buzzy, further adding to my hope. However, when we went, we were the sole customers.

There is only one option on the menu to eat – fondue. This is served with boiled potatoes (undercooked) and bread (comically stale and hard). Four tea lights were brought out and a stand set over them. Then the pot of cheese was placed upon it and given a stir. Stirring was essential as it was so lukewarm to begin with it started to set almost immediately. We ate as quickly as possible but still ended up with basically a lump of gooey cheese in the bowl before too long.

The best I can say about this is that at least it is not expensive at £13 for two. And to give them some benefit of the doubt, perhaps, for two people, they just couldn’t be arsed to make an effort with the food and looked upon us as an opportunity to get rid of their leftover product. Androuet, however, is similarly priced and is streets ahead in terms of, well, everything. 

St Moritz, 22nd May

Menu

Now, most people will tell you that cheese is actually a pretty expensive grocery to buy. Which must explain why fondue is such an overpriced dish, none more so than the ones served in St Moritz (the restaurant, not the club, though it is above the club). There's a choice of about five, starting with a very basic one which comes with only bread and is a mix of gruyere and emmenthal and costs £17.90 per person, all the way up to the ones that are meat in sauces which are £25.95 per person. Minimum two people so you have to take someone with you who also wants fondue if that's what you've got in mind. Not that you must have fondue - they have plenty of other things as well such as veal escalopes, steaks or calves liver.

Nothing more extravagant than vegetables or mushrooms are served with the cheese fondue, so we had the moitie-moitie - gruyere and vacherin, which came with bread and potatoes. All the fondues also have white wine. We also ordered a rosti on the side (yes, more potato) to try to sample a range of things.

I did like the fondue, because I always like anything to do with cheese, but it could have been thicker in my opinion. I think the wine gave it a good kick and the mix of cheese was a nice blend but not nice enough to make the price any less painful. All our bland little boiled potatoes were cooked well - not over or undercooked and the bread was of a sufficient density to handle being dunked in molten cheese. Was it bread made in-house, or even brought in from a reputable bakery? I highly doubt it. It wasn't the kind of stuff you wanted to eat on its own, it served merely as a conduit to get the cheese to your mouth.

The rosti was actually pretty tasty - it was huge so I'm glad we shared, and it was nice and crispy on the outside, and, again not spoiled by undercooking. There was also quite a lot of cheese in our saucepan and we weren't able to finish it all between the two of us.

Prices for beverages felt outrageous. The house wine was £4.30 for a small glass (125ml) but a diet coke was itself over £3.00 so I felt I might as well go for the alcohol. 

The place is definitely verging on a corny themed restaurant, but doesn’t quite take it to the extremes it would need to get there. Everything about it is a reference to Switzerland and the country in some way although it’s not immediately obvious. (We missed the cows on our saucepan of fondue until the end for instance.) It was a much smaller space than I expected, though I think there’s an upstairs, and I felt a little squeezed into our table. Not the best dining experience I’ve ever had; I would undoubtedly choose Androuet over St Moritz for fondue in terms of surroundings, price and what you are given.

 

Androuet, 5th October

Androuet made it onto my list in part thanks to a place called The Bourgeois Pig in New York. Before that I had never tried fondue and hadn't really wanted to. But I went there, had this delicious melted cheese creation and when I moved back to London, hoped to find somewhere similar. I haven't quite done that yet, but Androuet has charmed me anyway.

I found it while cutting across Spitalfields one day. The aroma of cheese wafted through the air and drew me closer, like a cartoon character being pulled along by tendrils of perfume. It was the cheese shop, and then I noticed that there was a restaurant attached to it that did fondue and raclette. Someone was eating raclette at that very moment. On the list it went. And last night I had the chance to try it with some of my friends.

The place is very, very small. The majority of the seating is outside so if it's not a nice day, you're going to suffer. Luckily last night was quite balmy. I hadn't been able to get through to the restaurant to secure a table so I decided to stop in in person and it's a good thing I did as most of the tables were booked up already. The owner/manager had one area where he said we could sit though. I then turned up again about 4 hours later, on my own as all my friends were running late and he greeted me by name. When I said my friends might not get there for another half an hour, assured me that was fine.  He seated me and I ordered a glass of Viognier to pass the time. I resisted the temptation to order some parmesan and cardamom crisps, even though I am sure they would have made my wait even more enjoyable.

None of my companions were all that familiar with Spitalfields and required some careful direction to get them to the right place. But we soon had the full complement of us sitting at the table. We were all there for one thing and one thing only. Ok, if you include wine, two things. But the main thing was cheese. Androuet does have a menu with other things on it such as salads and lamb chops and whatever. I barely glanced at it while I tried to choose between the fondue (comte and emmenthal), the raclette or the tartiflette. I decided I had to go full on cheese and rule out the tartiflette. Two of my friends ordered this. Alison was happy to have raclette so I had the fondue, ensuring we all more or less had something different. I think I made the right choice. The tartiflette looked delicious but it was, in all honesty, tiny. It came in its individual dish, whereas I was expecting, once two people had ordered it, that it would come in a dish from which they would share it. I had my own cauldron of fondue which came with gerkins, some charcuterie, some bread, and some other crudites type stuff. Alison's raclette came with similar, only without the meat (silly half veggie that she is) but with potatoes. 

I have no complaints about my fondue whatsoever. Melted cheese = yum. I can only say a very similar thing about Alison's raclette. The others' tartiflettes were too small to warrant sharing so I can't speak personally about them but they said it was good. Just too small. My friend Chris who was there, ordered some extra bread and that did take a while to come. I probably wouldn't have noticed but his appetite clearly wasn't sated so he did and wasn't very happy about it. We shared a bottle of the wine they recommend to go with the fondue. And it was so reasonably priced! I instantly expected their recommendation to be a dearer bottle, but it was only £15. Our cheese dishes were £12 each so the whole thing came to about £20 including tip.

If you're ever in NY and want some gooey cheese then the Bourgeois Pig will knock your socks off - the sheer range of fondues they have is ridiculous. But if you're in London and want a good place for it, head down to Androuet. It's got no frills, honest charm.

Find the menu & restaurant information on Zomato