Raclette Savoyarde is now available as a dinner special at Le Pichet
Supply is limited, so call today to make a reservation for dinner.
Le Pichet’s Raclette Savoyarde was recently featured on the Food Network show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” and many people have called to see if this dish is currently on the menu. Normally we serve raclette at both Cafe Presse and Le Pichet from about the first of November until late March each year. It is the sort of hearty, rich dish that seems perfect on a cold winter evening (not to mention the sort of fatty dish that is the ideal antidote to a holiday hangover).
There is also a production consideration to the seasonality of raclette. The height of raclette cheese production in the Savoie takes place in the warm months of late summer when the herds of dairy cows are in the high meadows of the French Alps. The milk they give at this time is of top quality and has a high fat content, perfect for making cheese. In the best chalet-made raclette cheese, you can taste the wildflowers, herbs and grasses of these summer meadows brought to the cheese from this rich, flavorful milk. After cheesemaking, the cheeses are aged for 4-6 months before sale they are ready to be sold, meaning that the ideal time to taste raclette is in mid to late winter.
In honor of the recent feature on the Food Network, I checked to see if any of the raclette from last summer was still available. Our friend Olivier Boyer at Corsican Cellars had a single raw milk raclette from the Savoie remaining in his cave. This 10# cheese, now nearly a year old, rich dense and pungent, is as far as I know, the last raw milk raclette from “Les Fruitieres des Bornes” dairy in the Savoie left in Seattle. Therefore, for as long as this noble cheese lasts, Raclette will be the available as a daily special at Le Pichet.
For more info about Raclette Savoyarde, please see this earlier post and recipe.
Holy mycelium, Batman!