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• Fondue Bourguignonne at Bread Company

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Senthial Kristamirty, a senior in Engineering, and his date Jon Bressler (not in frame), a senior in Rhetoric and Biology, enjoy Fondue Bourguignon on Saturday January 26, 2008. (Sam Mullineaux)

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Bread Company »
Address: 706 S. Goodwin Ave. Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 383-1007
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In the late Middle Ages, the grapes in the vineyards of Burgundy required a quick harvest. Thus, grape pickers often had little time for their midday meal. To remedy this difficulty, a monk named Johann du Putzxe developed a sort of fast food by dipping small chunks of meat into hot oil, and fondue Bourguignonne. a meat fondue named for those hungry grape pickers, was created.

I visited the Bread Company, 706 S. Goodwin Ave. in Urbana, to try their take on the historic dish, served au jus instead of with oil. Seated in the restaurant’s small yet charming and cozy dining room, my dinner companion and I sipped glasses of wine and waited for our fondue. One by one, clues of the dinner ahead were laid in front of us: a handful of long fondue forks, a Sterno-can burner and the skeleton of a fondue set and small dishes of dipping sauce (spicy German mustard, a brightly flavored basil and oil combination and

a savory dill and caper sauce, to name a few).

When the platter of raw beef came — the chunks displayed around a dish of cubed, roasted potatoes garnished with paprika and rosemary — my dinner companion, a rookie to fondue of any kind, eyed the beef, then the skewers and then the open flame, still sans fondue pot.

“... What do we do?” he asked, skeptically imagining roasting cubes of beef over an open Sterno flame. Our server arrived, both hands oven-mitted, and placed a pot of boiling, herbed jus over the flame, saving my companion from his high-class campfire worries.

Though we were given a handful of skewers (to cook multiple pieces of beef at once), we chose to cook one piece each at a time, trying not to overcook any of the beef. However, after several attempts at timing our cooking, we realized it was nearly impossible. Because we were boiling the meat, the outside stayed relatively gray throughout the cooking process without a golden-brown sear on the surface of the meat to help signify how thoroughly it was cooked.

Take the piece out too early, maybe two minutes or fewer, and find the inside a little rare and your plate covered in too-pink juice. One thing I found when cooking beef in its own juices is that it is hard for the meat to be “overcooked.” Yes, it can be cooked all the way through, but it doesn’t get tough or dry. And despite being gray, the meat is actually quite tasty, thanks to the dipping sauces (the basil was my favorite), as well as the herbs in the jus and those sprinkled over the raw platter.

Although I couldn’t see myself craving fondue Bourguignonne every night of the week, it is a great, leisurely meal to share with friends, whether you feel the urge for a taste of Burgundian history or the novelty of cooking your own meat at the table.