L'Art du Fromage, 1a Langton St, London SW10 (020 7352 2759). Meal for two, including wine and service, £95
My wife Pat, who is half Swiss, has brought into my life many gastronomic experiences involving chocolate, cheese and vinegar – though, happily, not at the same time. As a result I have eaten cheese fondue unironically for over two decades, and recognise it as a Very Serious Business. We do not make jokes about cheese fondue in our house. We do not quote Mike Leigh plays at each other, or listen to Demis Roussos records. We talk in hushed tones about the quality of our latest effort. Indeed, I regard the fondue as the very apex of man's achievement in the pursuit of deliciousness, a kind of processing squared. For what is it but the blissful marriage of wine and cheese, each of which in turn is the result of man playing relentlessly with his food? There is the grape, fermented unto alcohol; there is the milk, fiddled with until it curdles and matures into something profound. Whichever genius thought of combining those two must have been seriously hungry.
The point is that the opening of a new, cheese-based restaurant in Chelsea, promising proper fondue, was never going to be taken lightly by me. L'Art du Fromage is a rather sweet little place, with space across two intimately lit floors for a couple of dozen diners. It is run by charming, earnest French boys you would want to hug, just to reassure them that everything's fine, were it not for the fact that everything isn't really fine.
And I'm not just referring to the thumbnail-sized black stone I found in the salad that came with my starter. The three different cheeses on toast that lay on top – a mild Reblochon, a blue Fourme d'Ambert and a big, mouth-scouring Munster – were interesting enough, but the salad beneath was underdressed and filled with floppy, undercooked lardons. Though, of course, the stone didn't improve it. They offered a free glass of kirsch to make amends.
Cylinders of herbed goat's cheese wrapped in smoked salmon are the sort of thing you eat while waiting for something else to happen. Which in this case was the fondue Savoyarde, to be shared by a minimum of two people at £16.40 a head. The mix of Emmenthal and Beaufort with Comté sounded serviceable, and we very much liked the toasted, seasoned croutons dribbled with olive oil for dipping. So much better than the usual lumps of a Swiss loaf. Swiss bread is the only one that manages to taste stale 30 seconds after coming out of the oven. But the fondue itself was a dismal affair, starting with the moment when they poured on the kirsch and set fire to it. Flambéed cheese? What's all that about? You shouldn't burn off the alcohol: the kirsch should go into the fondue so your children get unwittingly drunk.
It went downhill from there. "It's under-seasoned," Pat said. "They've rubbed the pot with too much garlic, and it's separated." She was right. A glassy layer of liquid lay atop the molten cheese, and the flavour was shallow and dull. "What do the French know about fondues?" she muttered. "The recipe I learned was on an apron. It's not a secret." There are other fondues available, including one made with goat's cheese, which probably tastes like a farmyard smells, as savoury goat products often do.
To finish I ordered the trio of cheese ice creams. The goat's cheese version was sweet with a fine acidity, and actually didn't taste too much of the farmyard at all. The cream-cheese ice cream was insipid, and the Roquefort ice cream was the stuff of blood-soaked nightmares. It fractured on the spoon into shards of frozen blue cheese. Clearly it hadn't been churned for long enough or with anything like enough cream and sugar. A small tarte tatin was better in that it was edible, but it wasn't a fine specimen – the pastry was soggy and the caramelised fruit completely one note. Only the disk of goat's cheese on top made it interesting. All this and a short wine list which leaps gazelle‑like from "just about affordable" to "I'm not paying that" very quickly. Oh dear.
Done properly, a restaurant dedicated to cheese could be terrific. Unfortunately, at the moment, this one isn't.
