By Paul Reidinger

SWITZERLAND IS INDEED – in part – as mountainous as myth makes it. Some years ago we flew into Zurich at dawn and were entranced by the spectacle of a snowy city ringed by snowy peaks blushing pink with the February sun's first rays. Yet the railway traveler, setting out from, say, Lausanne en route to, say, Milan, knows that much of that journey is a gentle descent along the south face of the Alps, a country terraced and planted with wine grapes since time immemorial.

Yes, the Swiss make excellent wines, though they are tricky to find in this country or, for that matter, anywhere outside Switzerland. The Swiss export less than 1 percent of their annual wine production, and most of that goes to Germany. An infinitesimal amount also ends up at Matterhorn, a six-year-old restaurant (owned by Swiss-trained chef Andrew Thorpe and his wife, Brigitte) so well concealed in a faceless building somewhere between Russian Hill and Cow Hollow that you might easily pass by it on your way to the ATM without noticing the modest sign announcing its presence.

The low street profile does not seem to have put a dent in the restaurant's business. Within walls paneled with some kind of blond wood (birch? ash?) and under a gorgeous cove ceiling, Matterhorn seems to be reliably, if quietly, abuzz at all times with parties great and small, with the young and the old and the in-betweens, with locals and tourists, people in sneakers and people in homburg hats. Are they all there for a sip of Fendant, the crisp, fruity white wine from the Valais district? Or perhaps of Dôle, a fine red (mostly pinot noir) from the same region? Or have they shown up for fondue?

For fondue, in a variety of forms, is the heart of Matterhorn's menu and doubtless a draw to groups in search of a certain sort of communal dining experience. It is one thing to share small plates, as has become the fashion in the last few years; it is quite another to take turns cooking food over the restaurant equivalent of an open campfire. Fondue must be one of the great bonding experiences people can have indoors, though of course there are others that do not fall within the purview of this sort of piece.

Fondue suggests, to most people, cheese fondue, and Matterhorn offers it in a number of guises. The "original," or Valaisanne version ($28 for two people), consists of a pool of Gruyère and Emmentaler cheeses (along with a good shot of white wine and some undisclosed herbs) bubbling in a chafing dish, and a basket of exquisitely soft, house-baked bread cubes on the side. The cubes are fitted onto long forks for dipping. In the interest of some extra heft, we added a side of grilled, garlicky sausage slices ($4) – dippable, but quite satisfying on their own. And, as a further precaution to carbo overload, we had opened with a plate of Walliser alpine delights ($7.50), a selection of plump Black Forest ham, salami, prosciutto, and spicy cornichons, preceded by simple green salads (part of the fondue) littered with tomato quarters and chopped hard-boiled egg and dressed with a vinaigrette enriched with egg yolk.

Recently I have heard it suggested that no matter how much good bread you dip into vats of tasty melted cheese, you will come away feeling somehow that you haven't properly had dinner. Matterhorn's answer to these misgivings is one of the beef fondues, in which the bread is replaced by sliced raw beef piled into a Matterhorn-like heap and the melted cheese yields either to seasoned broth on the simmer or to hot oil. Feeling slightly anxious about fat calories and having opened with a fine, if caloric, raclette ($7.50) – a plate of melted white cheese ringed by new potatoes, cornichons, and pickled pearl onions – we thought the Chinoise broth ($40 for two) was the better part of valor. And it did not disappoint.

Cooking beef in broth instead of oil means poaching it instead of frying it. As poaching is less intense and more forgiving than frying, it is easier to turn out slices of rosy, medium-rare (or even rare) meat. Rare meat tends to be tender meat, and tender slices nearly melt into one of the palette of sauces – paprika, curry, horseradish, tartar, whole-grain mustard, lingenberry, chutney – offered on a separate platter. And if the Matterhorn mountain of meat is overwhelming (which does not mean two people can't polish it off anyway), one can always turn to a wealth of side offerings: marinated mushrooms and artichoke hearts, chunks of fresh kiwi and pineapple, spicy olives, and roasted potato quarters in a crock. (These need no broth bath.)

Inevitably, there is fondue for dessert. That would be the chocolate fondue ($14 for two), a pot of melted milk chocolate ready for dipping with a host of fruits, including banana, cantaloupe, strawberries, apples, grapes, and nectarines. Foolproof. But wanderers and malcontents might enjoy an apfelstrudel ($7), plated amid broad daubs of a vanilla sauce that powerfully resembled crème anglaise, or perhaps just a shot of grappa ($6.95), variety being the proverbial spice of life. Switzerland, with respect to variety, has a leg up on most of the rest of Europe, if not the world; it has a finger in the estimable, but quite different, culinary traditions of France, Germany, and Italy – putting it near if not at the top of the heap.