The unmistakable whiff of cow – pungent, but not unpleasant – hit me as soon as I arrived at Ferme Dunoyer above the Haute-Savoie village of Samoëns. Rather than put me off, the scent heightened my appetite for the cheese blowout that was to come.
Sat at a wooden communal table inside the pine-walled restaurant run by the farm’s owner, Blandine Dunoyer, I waited for the bonanza of mountain comfort food: fondue savoyarde, tartiflette, raclette, then diots (smoked pork sausages) with polenta. Somehow, I found room for potée savoyarde, a rib-sticking dish of slow-cooked pork shoulder, cabbage and potatoes, then a round of top-notch alpine cheese, reblochon and tomme de savoie, before a creamy blueberry dessert.
