Savoyard specialities
Savoyard cooking answers one constraint: feeding people who work outside, in the cold, with what the mountain and the farm provide. Hence generous dishes built around three ingredients that keep or are made on the spot: cheese, the potato and pork. This page tours the specialities of Haute-Savoie and links to the detailed pages.
The melted-cheese dishes
Three dishes dominate, and people often confuse them. Tartiflette is a gratin of potatoes, onions and bacon topped with half a reblochon melted in the oven. Savoyard fondue melts a blend of cheeses in white wine, eaten with bread. Raclette melts half a wheel of cheese that you scrape onto hot potatoes, with charcuterie and gherkins.
Alongside, berthoud is the Chablais speciality: Abondance cheese doused with white wine and garlic, baked in a small ramekin, eaten by dipping potatoes or bread. It is rarer and very characterful. You find it mostly around Châtel, La Chapelle-d’Abondance and Thonon.
The potato and pasta dishes
Crozets are small square buckwheat or wheat pasta, cooked as a gratin with cheese: that is croziflette, a cousin of tartiflette. The farcement (or farçon) of the Mont-Blanc area is a grated-potato cake, sweet and savoury, with dried fruit and charcuterie, cooked long in a special mould. More rustic, the matefaim is a thick potato or flour pancake.
Charcuterie and pork
Pork supplies the charcuterie of Savoie: country ham dried in the mountains, saucissons, and above all the diots, those sausages cooked in white wine with onions. They are often served with polenta or crozets. The pormoniers, sausages with herbs and vegetables, are an older variant. This pork cooking goes well with a red mondeuse.
Lake fish
Haute-Savoie has two big lakes, so a real tradition of freshwater fish. Arctic char is the noblest, with fine pink flesh, cooked simply meunière or in butter. Whitefish and perch (served as fillets) round out the menu of lakeside restaurants. You find them around Lake Annecy and Lake Geneva, paired with a dry Chablais white.
Desserts and liqueur
On the sweet side, the gâteau de Savoie is a light, airy sponge made from beaten eggs, very old. Rissoles are fruit turnovers (pear, apple, quince), and bugnes are carnival fritters. To end a meal, génépi remains the mountain liqueur of choice, made from a high-altitude plant.
Where to taste all this
Most of these dishes are eaten in the region’s mountain restaurants and farm inns, summer and winter. To experience them closest to the producers, look for alpine farm inns, dairies and village markets. The destination pages detail the good addresses and food activities area by area, for example in Annecy, Megève or the Aravis. For the detail of the cheeses that underpin this cooking, see the Cheeses of Savoie page.