Swiss Fair

Overview: Held annually at the Swiss park on the last Sunday of every July (closest to National Swiss Day on Aug 1), the Swiss fair is a celebration and congregation of Swiss people and culture. There is traditional Swiss music, swiss food and desserts, raffles pertaining to swiss culture, and a even people with Bernese Mountain Dogs (which are of Swiss origin as well.) It’s all very very cute and admission is $ 5 (as of Aug, 2015). This unfortunate summer timing means it’s always going to be very hot.
The Food: The selection is unfortunately quite small. Besides sausages, potatoes + cheese (raclette), a few European beers, Ravella (a milk-​soda for $ 5), and an assortment of baked goods, you won’t find much else here. Prepare to pay reasonable tourist prices such as $ 7 for a sausage and two sides. I quite enjoyed my sausage meal to be honest but was hoping for even more variety at the fair.
The Music: Choir-​based or accordion-​based music aimed at the older audience that hail from Switzerland. There was yodeling but don’t expect the wacky television-​gag type yodeling. Real yodeling sounds more like regular singing, at least to my ears.
The Events: There are three main areas: a small area devoted to children’s games, and an indoor area devoted to musical performances, and a mess-​tent for announcements and more music performances. Each has events going on constantly throughout the day.
The People: This event is really aimed at the Swiss immigrants in SoCal but I always felt welcome here.
Conclusions: The annual Swiss Fair is a wonderful experience that lacks the comprehensive Swiss cuisine that I was hoping for, but nevertheless provides a great cross section of Swiss culture.

Get ready for some Swiss pride! This was my third time at this once-​a-​year festival.
The run down of the event:
This fair happens around the end of July every (close to the time of National Swiss Day, which is August 1). At the fair, you can experience many things Swiss — including food, music, and occasionally someone walking an adorable Swiss breed of dog.
The food and drinks: I am half Swiss, so there is some nostalgia attached to the food for me. Swiss food tends to be very rich and often has cheese or cured meet as the star of the dish. Here you can get two classic styles of food. The first is sausages with sauerkraut (pickled cabbage), potato salad, rolls, or spätzle (sort of a boiled noodle that is typically made by grating the dough into boiling water). This platter is swimming with comfort food. The other dish is raclette (a pungent cheese that is melted and scraped onto boiled potatoes) with cornichon and small onions. For my trip, I opted for the sausage with starch as my husband and I were sharing and he wanted a lot of food. For this platter, the sausage was freshly grilled and great; the spätzle was a tad on the mushy side; the sauerkraut was tangy and flavorful; and the roll was an oversized hot dog roll that wasn’t very satisfying. Overall, I was happy to get into the spirit of the festival by getting a platter that was somewhat traditional, but if I come back again, I would order the raclette.
For dessert/​snacking, they have some cookies and bread traditional to Switzerland (linzer cookies and zopf). They also have an amazing dessert of meringue with whipped cream — it is so great on the hot day.
For non-​alcoholic drinks, they had some standard US sodas ($ 2.50 each) AND they had Rivella ($ 5 each), which feels super Swiss to me. Rivella is a carbonated drink that is partially made with whey from milk. It is hard to describe the flavor, but I would put it somewhere near a cream soda. If you are wanting to get into the Swiss spirit, I would recommend this drink! For alcoholic beverages, they were lacking on Swiss beverages. They did have a German beer (Bitburger; $ 5/​16oz) and one Swiss wine (Fendant; $ 30/​bottle), but they also had Bud/​Bud light ($ 4), a chardonnay, a cabernet, a pinot grigio, and a merlot ($ 5/​glass or $ 15/​bottle). I wish they had a Swiss beer — such as Appenzeller Bier.
For seating while eating, you can sit inside or out under the big tent that has a lot of picnic benches under it.
The activities: If you have kids, they do have a small carnival where kids pay ~$ 0.50 to play a game for tickets. These tickets can be exchanged for small prizes –but none of the prizes are very Swiss or unique IMHO. There is always a raffle which includes prizes along the lines of RT flight to Switzerland or two unlimited passes on Swiss railways for a week. This year, it was $ 5 for one raffle ticket for the flight or $ 20 for 5 tickets. There is a little rummage sale of assorted items you typically see at a swap meet.
The entertainment: While we were there, we saw several music events. There is an accordion orchestra inside. The Swiss-club’s choir sings several Swiss songs and the Swiss national anthem. I also got to see this cool performance where it looked like the musicians spun beads or coins in large terra cotta pots (making a rhythmic noise) while singing; it was unusual and very unique. Props for that.
Overall — it is a fun event where you can see some Swiss culture and some giddy Swiss people hanging out together once a year. They try to have some authentic food and drinks there, but not everything is super-​Swiss. I think there is some room for improvement, but overall there is a lot of effort to make this event fun.

Each year I attend the Swiss Fair it gets better and better. There is no other place where you can meet Swiss from all parts of the Los Angles area and their friends and family members. Experience what is would be like living in Switzerland and eating tradtional food (Spatzli, Brotwurst), drinks (bier, unfortuately no Revella), music (Alphorns and Accordions, Yodeling and Swiss Harmonie Singers) and speaking, hearing the various languages (Swiss-​German, French, Italian and a bit of Romanish) spoken in Switzerland. Check out

This is the only place that I would run into someone else with my name and so i did as the chef at the Matterhorn restaurant is name Ueli. The Swiss just spell their Ueli differently than I do but it sounds the same. In that silly way I feel connected to the Swiss culture and people.
When I visited Switzerland the food I had wasn’t mind blowing but it was comfy stick to your belly food and the food i had at the fair was the same. Boiled potatoes covered in the Fragrant and delicious Raclette Cheese. Sausages with cooked saurkraut (delicious) and chewy cheese covered spaetzl that my girlfriend couldn’t get enough of. The aroma of the melting Raclette cheese wafting throughout the fair was intoxicating.
I went back to the raclette stand and told them how amazing their cheese was and asked if it was easy to find in the stores. Another Raclette enthusiast nearby offered that it can be found at trader joes in small wedges and it’s incredibly expensive (of course) and that I had to pay attention to the country of origin because French Raclette and Swiss Raclette were two totally different entities. Wonder which one they thought was better:-)
The guy behind the stand (why didn’t I get his name?) also said that he likes to keep some Raclette in his fridge and when he’s hungry n is out of ideas of what to eat he will put some Raclette on an English muffin with a sliced tomato and viola he has a mini pizza. Mmmmm Genius!
In regards to traditional Swiss food at the fare those are your two options the Raclette stand and the sausage stand. The baked goods area is more a hodgepodge of cakes cookies and breads made by the local Swiss ladies and the recipes aren’t necessarily Swiss. Regardless they were delicious sweet treats.
I was bummed that the alcoholic beverages they served weren’t Swiss in origin. I know that there is some amazing Swiss beer out there brewed from pristine alpine Swiss water and I would have liked to sample some at the fair. The imported offering was German bitburger. Since Switzerland is mostly either German or French in heritage serving a light easy to drink German beer was an acceptable offering but a Swiss beer would have been exceptionally amazing. The wines they had were French in origin so they get kudos for that as well vs serving California wines.
I missed the yodelers I was bummed about that. I had called earlier in the morning to see if they had an entertainment schedule but they said they didn’t. After reading the one Unilocal review here on the fair stating that a couple hours was the amount of time to spend at the fair I wanted to time my visit to coincide with the yodelers. Boo! The yodelers were on earlier as I arrived around 2:30 and just missed them. The accordionists were delightful though. I thoroughly enjoyed them and adored their version of Edelweisse from the Sound of Music.
I think I could spend more than a couple of hours here at the fair but I’m a cheeseball. My girlfriend was definetly done after a couple of hours she dragged me out of there.
It’s not often that an ethnic community like the Swiss are gathered in southern California and I think it’s a great opportunity to talk to the people, enjoy their traditional music, and explore some yummy new flavors. I like to take my time and soak all that stuff in.

This is only a small fair so don’t expect TOO much or to stay for a whole day.
2^nd year in a row that we’ve come to the Swiss Fair. I thought this year was more organized than last. In 2010 the food wasn’t ready at 11:00am yet and we had to wait. This year the food was ready to go and you grab a plate, pick your sausage (s) right from the men grilling them, pick your sides and then pay.
Good turn out. We basically came here to eat and stayed for an hour. My husband and I both for the combo for $ 7.00 (roll, 1 sausage and 2 sides). We got a Schublig & Bratwurat (which we split), Spatzli with Cheese and Swiss Sauerkraut. YUM… Then stopped by for some homemade sweets.
If you’ve never experienced anything «Swiss» before (y’all need to get out more & experience other cultures) this was your chance! They have the fair annually so if you missed this one, maybe next year. They also had beer and the famous Raclette cheese. You can smell it from a mile away: P