Double dip: return of the fondue | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

A cheese fondue. Photograph: Riou/photocuisine/Corbis

I can still recall the vicarious excitement I felt when my parents had people round for dinner. The best coffee pot came out, the same one that Meg Richardson used to have on Crossroads, so did the sugar that looks like gravel and the Blue Nun was chilled. Thank God they weren't Demis Roussos fans, but otherwise the scene was perfectly set for an evening of dunking "French" bread into a pot of melted cheese.

Fondue parties were synonymous with the 70s, perhaps because the rolling power cuts meant that a fillet of boeuf en daube, slow cooking in an electric oven, could at any given moment be ruined. Or maybe it was just part and parcel of the tentative embracing of Europe, which included experimenting with "their" culinary habits.

We hadn't yet gone quite as far as eating aubergines, but melting cheese in a communal pot brought with it not just a whiff of Gruy?re but continental sophistication. My parents never actually used "foreign" cheeses. Cheddar fondues were the thing ? until they became a thing of the past. But they're back.

A double dip recession makes eating in and getting your guests to cook for themselves the eating out for cash-poor and time-poor bons viveurs. Suddenly, there's a whole range of different cook-it-yourself sets to cater to this - not just pronged forks, spirit lamps and fondue pans either. Nor, and this is good news for those with the 21st century affliction of wheat and dairy intolerances, are the ingredients all wheaty and cheesy.

Danish designer Bodum do a sleek matt electric table grill, replete with stylish stripe of muted colour. John Lewis sells stone raclette sets, party wok kits and perennially child friendly chocolate fondue sets.

There are mini tabletop pizza ovens, a thing called a Pierre Chaud, a hot rock on which you can cook your own steak and, my favourite, the Tatar's hat, which I came across in Switzerland. It's a conical shaped (hence the name) grill with hooks on to which you lob pieces of meat or fish and let them cook while vegetables simmer in the juices that collect in a pan underneath. When the owner of my Swiss restaurant was asked if there was a vegetarian option, he replied with a resounding Swiss "no!".

The current fondue renaissance may owe something to the popularity of the TV show Come Dine With Me, and off the back of it Swan has a range of communal Come Dine With Me cooking sets which include place settings and party games - though not the old favourite "guess who dropped their bread in the fondue pot".

Making cheese Fondue at L'Art du Fromage restaurant, Chelsea. Photograph: Andy Hall

The Table Top Cooking Company which sells just about every conceivable kind of communal cooking device also suggests recipes which include seared beef with coriander and lime dressing, and chilli grilled shrimp. But if you are a traditionalist then take inspiration from chefs like Heston Blumenthal who knows how to turn a fondue into a gourmet meal.

The Swiss St Moritz restaurant in Wardour Street offers a choice of seven savoury fondues including a couple of meat options while L'Art Du Fromage in Chelsea, as the name suggests does artisan cheese fondues.

A lot of Mexican dining requires a bit of self-assembly, with selections of things arriving on cast iron platters from which you must create your own tortilla. Also gaining in popularity are Mongolian barbecue joints such as Gobi in Brighton which, rather than singing, requires the punter to stir-fry for their supper.

To me, going out to cook your own food rather defeats the object but I'm very happy with the idea of sitting round the table with friends at home and cooking together, rather than sweating over a hot stove and feeling slightly excluded from the conversation. It's a kitchen supper taken a step further but, as yet, with no colloquial name to be bandied around by Frances Maude and his ilk: Table Top Tea anyone?

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/09/double-dip-return-of-the-fondue

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