One of the most underrated pleasures of a catered chalet three valleys ski holiday in the French Alps is the regional food and wine. Savoie, the department that encompasses most of the major French ski resorts has a distinct and deeply satisfying culinary tradition shaped by mountain life, dairy farming, and centuries of cross-cultural influence from France, Italy, and Switzerland.
If you’re heading to Val d’Isère, Tignes, Val Thorens, or any other Savoyard ski resort, here’s your guide to eating and drinking like a local.
The Character of Savoyard Cuisine
Savoyard cooking is unashamedly hearty. This is mountain food, developed to sustain people through long winters of physical labour. The key ingredients are dairy particularly aged mountain cheeses and cream cured meats, potatoes, and locally foraged mushrooms and herbs.
What makes it special is not sophistication but honesty. A well-made tartiflette in a mountain restaurant at altitude, with a glass of local white wine and a view of the Alps, is as satisfying as almost anything you can eat in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Context matters enormously in food, and the context of alpine skiing makes these dishes taste extraordinary.
The regional cuisine also benefits from exceptional local ingredients. Savoie is home to some of Europe’s finest cheeses and wines, most of which are little-known outside France because they’re produced in limited quantities and consumed locally.
The Essential Savoyard Dishes
Fondue Savoyarde
The original and arguably still the best. A fondue savoyarde consists of melted cheese (a blend of Comté, Beaufort, and Emmental is classic, though recipes vary significantly by family and restaurant) melted with white wine and a splash of kirsch. Bread is speared on long forks and dipped.
The tradition around fondue is as important as the dish itself. Losing your bread in the pot is traditionally punished by buying a round of drinks for the table. Fondue is a social meal, best shared with a group, over a long sitting, with liberal amounts of local white wine.
Where to eat it: Almost every mountain restaurant in the Savoie region serves fondue. For the genuine article, look for restaurants that make it with the full complement of local cheeses rather than generic processed blends.
Raclette
Raclette is both a cheese and a dish. The cheese, semi-hard, washed-rind, with a distinctly funky aroma and a beautifully melting character, is the centrepiece. Traditionally, a half-wheel of raclette is positioned near a heat source, and as the surface melts, it’s scraped (racler = to scrape, hence the name) onto plates with boiled potatoes, cornichons, and charcuterie.
Modern restaurant raclette typically uses a tabletop grill with individual trays for melting slices of cheese. Less theatrical than the traditional method, but equally delicious.
Raclette is an even simpler dish than fondue, which is part of its genius. When the cheese is good and good raclette cheese from the Savoie is excellent, it needs nothing but a potato and a pickle.
Tartiflette
Tartiflette is the most celebrated of the specifically Savoyard potato dishes, and it’s relatively modern developed in the 1980s as a way to promote Reblochon cheese. Despite its recent origins, it has become deeply embedded in the alpine food culture.
A good tartiflette consists of: sliced or roughly cubed potatoes, lardons (smoked bacon), onions softened in butter, a splash of white wine, crème fraîche, and a whole Reblochon cheese placed on top and baked until the cheese melts and the top is golden and bubbling.
The result is intensely rich, enormously satisfying, and absolutely not something to eat before a run of steep moguls.
Croziflette
Less well-known than tartiflette but equally delicious, croziflette substitutes the potatoes for crozets, tiny buckwheat pasta squares that are a Savoyard speciality. Combined with lardons, cream, and Beaufort cheese, this is one of the region’s more distinctive dishes and worth seeking out.
Diots au Vin Blanc
Traditional Savoyard sausages (diots) made from pork, slow-cooked in white wine with shallots and herbs. One of the dishes that best captures the everyday domestic cooking of the region simple, warming, and made better by local wine both in the dish and alongside it.
Gratin Savoyard
Similar to the better-known gratin dauphinois (which uses cream), gratin savoyard is traditionally made with bouillon rather than cream, plus Beaufort cheese. The result is lighter than dauphinois but equally satisfying. It’s a staple side dish across the region.
Soupe à la Gratinée (French Onion Soup)
While not exclusively Savoyard, French onion soup is a mountain restaurant staple and worth mentioning because the versions served in alpine restaurants are often exceptional – rich beef stock, slowly caramelised onions, a thick crust of bread, and a generous layer of melted Gruyère or Beaufort. On a cold day after a long morning of skiing, there are few better dishes.
The Cheeses of Savoie
Savoie produces a remarkable range of mountain cheeses, most of which are made from the milk of cows grazed on high-altitude summer pastures. The high-altitude diet gives the milk – and therefore the cheese, a distinctive floral, grassy complexity.
Beaufort
The king of Savoyard cheeses. Beaufort is a large, firm, cooked mountain cheese with a protected designation of origin (AOP) meaning it can only be made in a defined area of Savoie. Its flavour is complex and nutty, with a smoothness and depth that sets it apart from Gruyère or Emmental.
Beaufort d’été (summer Beaufort, made when cows graze the high alpine pastures) and Beaufort chalet d’alpage (from specific high-altitude chalets) are the finest grades, with deeper colour and more complex flavour.
Abondance
Named after the valley in Haute-Savoie where it originates, Abondance is a semi-hard washed-rind cheese with a distinctive pressed curve shape. Its flavour is rich, slightly fruity, and complex, one of the finest mountain cheeses in France, and curiously little-known outside the region.
Reblochon
The cheese that tartiflette was invented to promote. Reblochon is a soft, washed-rind cheese made from the milk of Abondance, Tarine, and Montbéliarde cows. Its rind ranges from orange to pink, and its interior is smooth and buttery with a distinctly mushroomy flavour.
There are two grades: farmer’s Reblochon (with a green casein label) made directly on the farm, and dairy Reblochon (red label) made from pooled milk. The farmer’s version is considered superior, seek it out.
Tome de Savoie
A mountain cheese with a grey, mouldy rind and a pale, slightly elastic interior. Tome de Savoie is milder than Beaufort or Abondance, with a grassy, slightly sour character. It’s excellent on a cheese board alongside stronger cheeses and makes its own appearances in cooking notably in the Savoyard version of aligot (a rich mashed potato dish).
Vacherin Mont d’Or
Strictly speaking this is a Franco-Swiss cheese (it’s made in both the Franche-Comté region of France and in the Swiss canton of Vaud), but it’s widely available in alpine Savoie. A winter cheese only, it’s made from October to March Vacherin Mont d’Or is contained in a spruce bark ring that gives it a distinctive woody aroma. It’s eaten warm, ideally baked in its box with garlic and white wine poured in, then scooped with bread.
The Wines of Savoie
Savoie’s wines are among France’s best-kept secrets. The region produces relatively small quantities, much of it consumed locally, which means it’s rarely seen on UK restaurant wine lists. But the wines are distinctive, food-friendly, and often exceptional value.
White Wines
Apremont and Abymes: The backbone of Savoyard white wine production. Made from the Jacquère grape, these wines are light, dry, minerally, and refreshingly crisp – perfect with fondue or raclette. Apremont comes from a village of the same name south of Chambéry; Abymes is named after the rock fall that shaped the unique soil. Look for producers like Louis Magnin, Gilles Berlioz, or the co-operative Cave de Cruet.
Chignin-Bergeron: The prestige white of Savoie. Made from the Roussanne grape (locally called Bergeron), this wine has much more body and complexity than Jacquère-based whites honeyed, aromatic, with a mineral backbone. It pairs beautifully with fish, cream-based dishes, and richer mountain food.
Roussette de Savoie: Made from the Altesse grape, with a different appellation structure allowing wines from various villages. More aromatic and slightly fuller than Jacquère wines, with floral and peach notes.
Red Wines
Savoie produces less red wine than white, but what exists is interesting.
Mondeuse: The great red grape of Savoie, producing wines that are dark, tannic, peppery, and intensely fruity. At its best, Mondeuse is fascinating and age-worthy. At its simplest, it’s a robust, earthy country red that goes brilliantly with charcuterie and diots. The best producers – Gilles Berlioz and Domaine Dupasquier are among the finest wine makers that deserve far more international attention than they receive.
Gamay de Savoie: Lighter and more quaffable than Mondeuse, Gamay de Savoie offers juicy, approachable red wine for everyday drinking.
On-Mountain Eating: What to Order
Most mountain restaurants in Savoie serve a similar selection of dishes. If you’re sitting down for lunch on the mountain, here’s a practical guide to ordering:
- For a light lunch: A plat du jour (dish of the day), typically a simple meat or pasta dish with salad, around €12-18.
- For something warming and local: Soupe à la gratinée, croziflette, or diots are all excellent mountain choices that won’t leave you unable to ski in the afternoon.
- To avoid: Fondue and raclette are genuinely delicious, but the quantity of cheese involved makes afternoon skiing considerably more challenging. Save these for the evening.
- On a terrace in the sun: A cold beer or a glass of local white wine on a sunny March terrace is one of skiing’s great simple pleasures. Sainte-Croix and Apremont are widely available and ideal.
Bringing Savoie Home
Several Savoyard specialities travel well and make excellent gifts or post-holiday purchases:
- Beaufort: Holds up well for several weeks when properly stored. Buy a wedge from a fromagerie rather than a supermarket.
- Génépi: A herbal alpine liqueur made from the génépi plant that grows above 2,000m. Complex, aromatic, and deeply alpine in character. Sip as a digestif after dinner.
- Chartreuse: Made by Carthusian monks in a monastery near Grenoble since the early 18th century, Chartreuse both green and yellow is one of France’s most distinctive spirits. Widely available in the region and considerably cheaper than in the UK.
Final Thought
The food and wine of Savoie represent one of the great regional culinary traditions of Europe: honest, seasonal, ingredient-led, and shaped by the demands and pleasures of mountain life. Engaging with it properly, seeking out local producers, eating in restaurants that serve regional specialities, bringing home a wedge of Beaufort and a bottle of Mondeuse, transforms a ski holiday from a sporting trip into a genuinely enriching cultural experience.
The mountains are spectacular. But the cheese is extraordinary.
