San Francisco’s Matterhorn a singular fondue expertise
Gustav “Gus” Erpen moves around the Matterhorn restaurant and shares details of the furnishings with the ease of a person showing off their own living room.
He is a lively 92 years old, walks through the Swiss restaurant and points to details like the massive alphorn that hangs on a wall, which he is proud of as it should be; Not only did Erpen help build the building he is the owner of, but he has also worked since it was founded in 1987 to create an authentic Swiss restaurant experience modeled on his childhood in the Alps.
“Back then there were three Swiss restaurants in San Francisco,” says Erpen. “I’ve always been a little disappointed with these restaurants. Not because of the food, but because of the decor. It was just a couple of pictures [of the country]So when I built this building I said to myself, I want to build one [Swiss] Restaurant – and here we are. “
Erpen’s desire to create this authentic experience made the interior one of the most impressive things about the Matterhorn. The space was carefully measured and a Swiss construction company fitted out the wooden interior before shipping it to San Francisco, where it was assembled into the restaurant that is now on Van Ness Avenue. The cozy interior made of branch wood is transporting and is reminiscent of a ski hut – especially with a bright red gondola chair in which guests can sit and dine in a corner. On his tour of the restaurant, Erpen points out a wooden beam in a dining alcove that bears his family name, as is traditional in Swiss residential buildings, he says.
The original owner of the Matterhorn, Gus Erpen, points out a vintage gondola from Switzerland that will be in the Matterhorn restaurant in San Francisco on September 28, 2021.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
Erpen ran the restaurant for the first few years after it opened before handing the keys over to Brigitte and Andrew Thorpe, who ran the Matterhorn for 25 years. While Erpen is the genesis of the restaurant, Natalie Horwath is the restaurant’s youngest chapter: Horwath, a trained pastry chef from the Culinary Institute of America, is the current operator of the Matterhorn and has taken it over after living with her husband more than in Switzerland three years and fell in love with the food there.
The plan was always to return to San Francisco, Horwath said, but when the couple moved back with their young son in 2013, Horwath missed much of the Swiss food she’d tried.
“While we were there, I just fell in love with the concept of cheese fondue and raclette and how easy it is,” said Horwath. “The food really celebrates each region’s cheese, and it’s not the cheesy approach that Americans have gotten used to since the ’70s – it was just a real, really fun, engaging meal and I thought,’ Gosh, that would be really great back in the United States on a really authentic level. ‘”
Horwath began experimenting with local cheeses from local stores such as the Bi-Rite Market in Mission and the Cheese Board in Berkeley to find the right cheese combination to create the flavorful and spicier fondue that is typical of Switzerland, to recreate. She launched a pop-up, Sbrinz (named after a cheese from Switzerland), to try out her fondue recipes and raclette – a Swiss dish made by heating cheese and scraping the melted and oozing cheese on foods like potatoes will – that would be received by the locals, lead the concept for four years and also sell baked goods at farmers’ markets.
She started looking for possible spaces for her own fondue restaurant when she discovered that the Thorpes were retiring; Horwath remembered the interior made in Switzerland from previous visits, found the location “as authentic as it gets” and convinced Erpen to leave the restaurant to her.
Matterhorn’s current owner Natalie Horwath (left) and the original owner Gus Erpen pose for a photo on September 28, 2021 in the Matterhorn Restaurant in San Francisco.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
Although Horwath would keep the original name of Erpen’s original restaurant, she was able to put her own stamp on the business: Before the establishment reopened in 2019, Horwath and her husband made some slight changes to the restaurant, making sure that many of the Character of the original wood and decor. The outside hallway has been freshened up with pieces of Swiss toys and decorations – “We wanted people to go to Switzerland as soon as they got to those front doors,” said Horwath – and a great work of art by French artist Charlie Adam in the salon.
The door and a painting show pictures of the Matterhorn in the Matterhorn restaurant in San Francisco on September 28, 2021. The St. Bernard dogs Heidi and Otto sit on the chairs under the painting by Charlie Adam.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
Other innovations that Horwath added to the restaurant included the aforementioned gondola chair and blankets for the Swiss Army, which were made into seat cushions; an unused balcony also created space for a detailed scene of the Swiss Matterhorn and shows the trains found in the south-east of the country. The handcrafted work of art shows a real toy train that continuously circles a Swiss village in front of the windows, a kind of moving diorama. According to Horwath, the purpose of the decoration is really to “celebrate Switzerland”.
A miniature train set is on display in front of the back windows of the Matterhorn restaurant in San Francisco on September 28, 2021.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
In all of her fondue research since her arrival in the States, Horwath has landed on her favorite recipe, which she has been serving on the Matterhorn since it reopened in September 2019. She only had six months to offer her customers her fondue recipes and treats from her addition of a. to serve bakery side of business before COVID-19 lodging order began in March 2020.
As a form of “panning” while the restaurant was closed, Horwath made all sorts of baked goods for a weekend bakery sale that they held weekly in the restaurant. The Matterhorn also offered its own “après-all-day” take-away boxes containing Swiss cheese, charcuterie meat from the Golden Gate Meat Company and bread. As an additional option, the Matterhorn also rented fondue equipment for those who really missed the restaurant’s fondue options before it finally reopened to indoor customers in February 2021.
But in the past year, Horwath has overcome a lot beyond the pandemic. While he was working through the pandemic with a small kitchen team, Horwath had severe back pain. When she went to the hospital for an MRI in June, she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.
Horwath was open about her diagnosis, shared updates on her health with employees and kept valued customers up to date on Instagram. Horwath believes the community is important and wanted to explain why they are less in the restaurant and comfortable enough to publicly share their health problems.
Co-owner Natalie Horwath posted family photos on the walls of the Matterhorn restaurant in San Francisco on September 28, 2021.
Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE
Friends from the hotel industry stepped in to help, which Horwath smiled and called a “Matterhorn and friends” concept. Horwath outsourced baked goods that she would normally make but couldn’t because of her back pain. For example, Rosalind Bakery came to bake her bread for the restaurant, and chef Michelle Polzine with (now closed) 20th Century Cafe contributed her famous honey cake for the menu.
“When bad things happen, the love, perseverance and resilience of people is amazing,” said Horwath. “And I think we’ve learned so much from COVID that… we’re like a small family. [After the diagnosis] it was just: ‘OK, let’s be sad, of course, but then let’s think about how we can keep things going for ourselves and our customers.’ “
Right now, thanks to her team and friends, Horwath has cut down on her duties at work and the cancer is keeping stable, she said. They put the weekend bakery on hold, but it focuses on the four days of the week the restaurant is open in hopes of expanding to more days soon.
In culinary terms, not much has changed, and the Matterhorn classics have remained, such as the fondue options and the melted cheesiness of the raclette dishes; The Moitié-Moitié cheese fondue is still the clear favorite with guests, Horwath said, but they have started to slowly expand the menu as she sees fit. A new addition is a pork schnitzel with breadcrumbs from Rosalind Bakery’s breads, while Horwath is considering lighter options, such as a vegan main course.
The Matterhorn room remains a place for escapism – especially given the pandemic – and Horwath continues that tradition through both the food and the decor. “I hope that customers will have an authentic Alpine experience that will make them feel transported to the mountains of Europe,” she said. “… the whole experience of letting the smell of cheese waft through the area, this cozy room where you can’t hear anything from the street and – if you didn’t know otherwise – you could feel as if you were there in a ski resort Europe.”
Matterhorn is located at 2323 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco. Their opening times are Wednesday through Saturday, 5 pm-9pm; Closed Sunday to Tuesday.
