Haute cuisine: fine dining in South Tyrol

Most come for the Alpine skiing but the burgeoning culinary scene continues to expand and delight

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Altissima isn’t quite like any brunch I’ve ever been to: rustled up by a quartet of chefs with six Michelin stars between them, in a mountain hut 2,100 metres above sea level. Sous-chefs in immaculate whites wrestle with portable stoves, while waiters in natty wool suits and knee-length socks swoop in with champagne refills. Our fellow guests stamp in from the slopes shrugging off ski jackets, and exchanging snowy boots for soft, fur-lined slippers.

The kitchen, meanwhile, turns out a succession of exquisite dishes, from extravagantly truffled eggs to Wagyu carpaccio, via caviar-heaped potatoes, Kamchatka king crab and the best chicken risotto I’ve ever tasted, laced with buffalo butter, mantis shrimp and a hint of tangerine. Alarmingly, there are still several courses to come, plus dessert and stilton, before we attempt to squeeze into a snowmobile back down the mountain. Luckily, my old-school salopettes have plenty of give; tailor-made for high-altitude gluttony, which comes in handy in this part of the world.

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