-Dangereux!-

The morning sky was cigarette smoke, its grey, cloudy haze suffocating me as I walked to class this morning.  How Parisian, weather.  But I'm not here to write about more cloudy weather and another day in grammar class; I am here to tell you about cheese.

Last night was our fondue dinner with ACCENT at L'Assiette aux Fromage.  This basically means 'cheese plate', a silly name for a restaurant so delicious that it was torture to put the steaming cheese onto my plate before devouring it.  The plate merely came between me and the cheese.

I must preface this by telling you about the 'lecture' I had been given the night before by Mme Fleury.  She didn't know I'd be going to a fondue restaurant the following evening, but she was talking about some other cheese thing and so, naturally, I asked a question about fondue.  What follows is a rough English translation that is much shorter than what Mme Fleury actually said: "Non! Fondue is dangerous! I have heard about so many accidents with those long pointy forks and flames and hot food...it is so dangerous!"  (I never told her where we went to dinner, but then again, she never asked).

Fondue is dangereux, you say?  Only if you mean I'm in danger of becoming addicted.  After a good hour of sitting, the waiters lit the flames and brought each table a pot of the cheese-white wine mixture, and a pot of boiling oil.  We had a basket of slightly stale bread chunks - thus prepared so they wouldn't fall off of our skewers - and a plate of raw beef cubes and 5 different dipping sauces.


Real French bread sopping with simmering cheese and wine...is something you must try for yourself.  I cannot help you here.  The beef surprised me - after sticking it in the oil for a minute or two, it was crisp on the outside and juicy sweet on the inside.  I don't even dare describe how delicious it was when you both cooked the meat, and then dipped it in the cheese pot...I suppose the only dangerous moments in the evening were when I wanted to take the food straight from the pot and eat it off the skewer, but since that would leave my mouth horribly burned, I remembered to return my morsels to the plate and eat them with a fork.

Dessert was a plate of fruit accompanied by a pot of (any guesses?) dipping chocolate.  It was okay.  But pitiful compared to the entrée.  Dipping raw fruit into lukewarm chocolate just doesn't feel as primal and exciting as frying your own hunk of meat in bubbling oil, seeing the flame under your little cooking pot, and slopping gooey cheese all over the table.