HAUTE ROUTE_2013

FOOD

When you’re exhausted, everything tastes good. 

Breakfast was always included in the cost of lodging.  At a minimum, every breakfast included bread, butter, jams, coffee, tea, and juice.  Some places also served croissants, fresh fruit, sliced cold cut meats, cheese, muesli, cereal, yogurt, and occasionally hard boiled eggs.

We ate many lunches on the go and always managed to stop at picnic locations with great views.  Ham & cheese sandwiches were most common, but we also ate baguettes with sausage, cheese, cornichons, olives, tubed salmon pate, hard boiled eggs.  These were complemented by apples, nectarines, fresh apricots (once), gingerbread, chocolate bars, trail mix, fruit juices, water, chocolate milk drinks.  We bought our picnic lunches from our hotels and huts, and sometimes assembled them at grocery stores.  A few times we passed by small towns during lunch time and treated ourselves to sit-down meals in restaurants (pasta, steak, salads, potatoes or fries, beer, wine, etc.).

Dinners were usually at hotel restaurants. The typical fare included vegetable soup; beef or prok stew with mushrooms, chicken, or pasta with meats and cheese; rice or potatoes and bread, salads or steamed vegetables, and dessert.  Sometimes we had beer or wine with dinner, which were reasonably priced.  The raclette and fondue we had were also very good. 

Neither of us have dietary restrictions, which greatly simplified our food decisions. Vegetarians should be fine so long as they can deal with a lot of butter/cheese/pickle sandwiches. Vegans may find it slightly more challenging because of the prevalence of butter and cheese, which were important sources of calories.  People who wish to avoid gluten may have some difficulties.  (Bread is very common to all three meals, especially breakfast.  Oatmeal or muesli was not always available for breakfast.  Some stages of the hike did not pass by any towns where lunches could be assembled from grocery stores.  Dinner shouldn’t be as big a challenge, as rice or potatoes were usually available.)  We brought with us half a dozen (Clif Mojo) snack bars for emergencies but never had to rely on them.