Lighter than his brother, vegetarian, but just as juicy and crispy. The cheese kebab, made without animal rennet. picture: zvg
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Cheebab goes around the world – how a Zurich native gets famous with his cheese kebab
A cheese maker in the Zurich Oberland spent a long time working on the perfect doner kebab without meat. Now media around the world are reporting on his invention, the vegetarian doner kebab.
Ringwil has an hourly PostBus connection, a school building for one class, a village association that takes care of mowing the playground, a cantonal prison – and a special cheese dairy. Visitors from Berlin and Holland travel here. Are standing in front of Roland Rüegg’s door unannounced and want to try his cheese kebab.
“The response is brutal,” says Rüegg, putting his cheese arms on the table in the office. The world has obviously been waiting for his idea: the vegetarian kebab variant – the most common snack in Switzerland. There is even a kebab shop in places where the village shop or the “deer” have closed for a long time. Only vegetarians stay hungry. And if the skewer traditionally stocked with lamb, but mostly with beef, could become a little more Swiss …
Rüegg launched its Cheebab two years ago. He was able to test his cheese on a spit in a kebab stall in the Zurich Oberland. The challenge: it must not flow down like raclette, but must become crispy when it is grilled. Is it difficult to get there? “Yes,” says Rüegg and is silent. It is a moment like this Appenzell cheese advertising: a well kept secret.
Manufacturing is the big business secret
For lunch we go to Reboss Said’s “Kebab House” in Gossau, he is currently the only one who regularly offers the Cheebab. Rüegg and his business partner Jonathan Studer order their doner box: cheese and meat mixed. We test the Cheebab pure in the flatbread. The well-fried pieces of cheese are reminiscent of the crust on the bottom of the fondue caquelons, other pieces are softer. The eating experience comes surprisingly close to the original, and the most important thing: afterwards there is no cheese lump feeling.
The Cheebab can be stacked as high as you like: inventor Roland Rüegg, left, in the «Kebab House» by Rebaz Said on Grütstrasse in Gossau ZH. picture: chmedia
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From Ringwil you can see Lake Zurich, but the city, which is hungry for new food trends and where a new gelateria can lead to snakes on the street, is far away. Rüegg had such a good idea that one wonders why someone didn’t have it before, but he doesn’t care about marketing. He may not care. The customers come by themselves. A German festival organizer has replaced almost all of its raclette stands with cheebab booths. A Dutchman persistently calls him. SV, the Swiss restaurant, hotel, and cafeteria company, has added a Cheebab car to its range: SV staff and student restaurants can rent it for a week. Surprisingly, no restaurateur has yet called from the big Swiss cities.
The Cheebab is already internationally known: The English tabloid “The Sun”, the lifestyle magazine “Vice” and various German media have reported. “10vor10” will soon send a contribution. “Galileo”, the knowledge magazine from ProSieben, finally wants to come to Ringwil. Rüegg tries to hold the people from Germany for a while longer. He is afraid that the rush will be too big, he must first build his new business in Wildberg. He also does not want to give up his previous cheeses, the “Chämifeger” or the “Rostigen Ritter”. He prefers to invent even more that experimentation is the best thing about his job, says Rüegg. He also finds the Cheebab:
It is not yet finished.
More spices are needed
And should be spicier. A cheesebab skewer weighs 10 or 20 kilos, the molds for which he worked out himself or had made. The hole for the skewer is now punched by a machine – he drilled his first cheese with the drill.
Rüegg has four employees and four apprentices and one wonders how long he can cope with the growing hype surrounding his invention. But he says he can at least triple the amount of 100 to 500 kilograms a week today.
Swiss cheese – interculturally produced
Rüegg produces the cheese from regional milk. The oriental street food from the grill skewer in the vegetarian version has now become completely intercultural. Incidentally, the cheese is produced in Ringwil by five nationalities: Swiss, Polish, German, Eritrean and Somali.
The cheese maker deliberately hired her because migrants rarely get a real chance. After graduation, the world is open to them: A Swiss milk technologist can start working anywhere abroad, says Rüegg. He also traveled around the world. But now the foreign country comes to him in the Zurich Oberland in Ringwil. (Aargauerzeitung.ch)
