Recently we decided to take a little day trip down to the Emmentaler show dairy and restaurant in Affoltern im Emmental to see how cheese is made! It’s a bit far from Zurich, about an hour and a half, but was a nice drive and a cute place to visit.
The factory consists of 4 different buildings from various time periods of the company. The big building in the picture had a cheese making factory viewing area, a gift shop and the restaurant. There was a smaller building which showcased a shepherds house and old fashioned cheese making demonstration. The other two buildings were a bakery and hands on cheese making experience. By the way, parking is metered, but you get a coupon with your parking ticket to use in the gift shop!
Carter liked watching the guys make the cheese and guessing what they were going to do next! There is also an audio tour you can rent, but we passed on that.
After a quick look around the factory we headed up to the restaurant for lunch! If you’re wondering what was on the menu for lunch- cheese, cheese and more cheese! My husband had a salad which was topped with cheese. I had raclette (pictured above) which is basically delicious melted cheese with potatoes and a few other veggies. Raclette, like fondue, is a very popular cheese meal from Switzerland.
Cheese making class
After lunch we headed over for the cheese making class! It was in German, although they provided us with an English info sheet so we could read the key points. The class is a little long, with a large portion of it being the guy talking about cheese and cows and the company. Just something to keep in mind if you bring kids! On the other hand, he let the kids do all the hands on parts from adding the enzymes to mixing the mix to helping separate the curds and whey.
Everyone got to try the whey, which is the byproduct of the cheese. If you’ve never tried it, it tastes like very sweet milk! We also got a sample of the soft cheese we made.
If you’re going with kids you can also bring them to the playground next to the restaurant where all the play equipment looks like cheese! They had outside seating for the restaurant here as well, which I can only assume is used during warmer times!
The playground was cute and had a nice view of the nearby mountains and farm land!
The cheese factory was a nice excursion, especially if you are in the area. We also went to the Kambly cookie factory about 20 minutes away to round out our day! I would recommend going when it’s a bit warmer outside, as they seem to have more activities listed on their website for the summer.
For more information check out their website!
