St. Hubertus - San Cassiano
Rosa Alpina, the hotel housing the restaurant - and some impressive mountains
Rating: 18/20
Where: San Cassiano, Italy
When: Dinner for 2 on 22 September 2022
Cost: Tasting menu 320 Euro, Wine Pairing 220 Euro
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, #29 on Top 50 Restaurants list (2022)
Why: Excellent seasonal cuisine that sources all ingredients locally, conveying a true sense of time and place
Note: St. Hubertus closed in March 2023 for extensive renovations of the hotel. Chef Norbert Niederkofler has since opened a new restaurant nearby.
St. Hubertus is located in the Dolomites in north-eastern Italy, not too far from the Austrian border. Getting there involves some windy mountain roads, but also offers gorgeous views of a dramatic scenery. The restaurant is located in the five-star Rosa Alpina hotel, and the easiest way to obtain a restaurant reservation might be to first reserve a room, and then ask the concierge to book the restaurant. Otherwise, most days are already fully booked when the reservations are released for the season. Speaking of which, the hotel and restaurants are only open during the summer and the winter, and are closed during the spring and the fall.
The restaurant's logo is the mountain range that is towering above it (see photo), a choice made not only on aesthetic grounds. The philosophy of the kitchen is to "cook the mountain", to prepare a seasonal cuisine that only uses ingredients from within a few miles of the restaurant. Naturally, that means that the winter menu will involve more preserved foods than our summer menu. The staff mentioned that the switch from classical fine dining to this very local cuisine was made with the explicit aim of gaining a third Michelin star, and the work paid off in 2018.
The decor of the restaurant is a modern, rustic mountain cabin, with simple wooden tables and the requisite deer antlers on the wall.
The restaurant only serves a tasting menu, so no choices need to be made when arriving. A wine pairing is available and is notable in that it deviates from the classic one glass per dish approach. More on that later, but the wines were generally good, but without any mind-blowing standouts. There is also an optional cheese course - we skipped it since the tasting menu already provided more than enough food.
Said food started arriving as soon as we sat down. We were served a Saibling fish (char) that had been marinated and smoked and was impaled on a twig of fir. The fish was meant to be dipped into a caramelized cream seasoned with horseradish. In practice, this was a bit hard to execute since the fish preferred to fall off the twig rather than end up in one’s mouth. The dish had light flavors overall - a bit of smoke, a bit of sweetness from the cream, but barely any taste of horseradish. Nice, but harmless 17.
In the middle of the table, we were served a tartlet filled with mountain potatoes, goat cheese, onions and sauerkraut. Full of very bold flavors (especially compared to the char), with the sourness of the sauerkraut being dominant. Yummy 18.
While we were still pondering the tartlet, a "mountain bruschetta" arrived: a rye bread topped with basil and what looked like tomatoes, but were in fact marinated plums. (Tomatoes don't grow too well in the mountains, so there were none on the menu. Similarly for citrus fruit.) The result really did taste a bit like tomatoes, very acidic and lovely, only the bread felt a bit too dry 16.
The speed at which these dishes were arriving was uncomfortably fast (especially if you're trying to take notes). We suspect that the reason was to catch us up with the other tables: the restaurant opens at 6:30pm, and our reservation was at 8pm, but we still finished at the same time as everyone else. Taking the speed down a notch would have made for a more enjoyable experience.
Our first official tasting menu course was a salad made from mountain herbs and flowers, with some crackers and carrots in the mix, all finished with a dressing of elder flowers and zucchini flowers. The dressing was very sour and salty, but also with a perfect, bold flavor - an amazing salad (20 if scored separately). The salad came with a glass of apple and herb juice, which felt very healthy, but was also very sweet thanks to the apples, and the herbs were barely noticeable (15 by itself). Finally, there was a buckwheat cracker with flax seed that had been brushed with lamb fat. A bit dry by itself, it was excellent balancing the salad's saltiness (17 or 18). Overall, a great start to our dinner 18.
A white fish tartare was served next. In addition to the fish meat, the plate also contained its scales and roe. Some dill and a sauce made from dill oil and white wine completed the dish. I have to admit that having fish scales in a tartare was a bit odd, but the texture was subtle enough to not be too much of a distraction. The sauce was lovely and salty, and a great combination with the more flavor-restrained tartare 19.
Next came eel "as a porchetta". The eel was cooked, glazed in honey and hay, wrapped in lardo and then glazed again with soy sauce. On the side we received a cup of eel consomme with chive oil. This dish was HUGE in flavor: porky, savory, full of umami, and quite heavy, with the broth excellent as well. It's rare to see an eel dish this full of flavor (and this heavy). Hard to imagine this being done any better 20. Two white wines were paired with the dish, meant to highlight different aspects of the dish. I'm not sure that this worked particularly well, but it was a nice idea.
Bread and butter arrived next. The butter was from a farm located near the chef's birthplace and had been whipped into a light cream. The bread was warm, had a great crunch, and the butter was outstanding 18.
A risotto came seasoned with wild garlic oil, stracchino cheese and topped with shavings of dried lamb. The rice was cooked perfectly al dente, the wild garlic lovely, the whole dish just lightly cheesy - I would have preferred a bit more roundness/creaminess and more oomph. Or maybe it's just hard to follow Le Calandre's risotto from the previous night 18.
"Ravioli" were actually steamed gyoza filled with porchetta, rabbit and lardo, and served in a kohlrabi consomme. The broth was amazing (20 if rated individually), the gyoza lovely and not too heavy, but not as flavorful as the consomme 19. The paired wine went better with the food than by itself - a success for the wine pairing.
Sweetbreads had been prepared simply, using only butter in a cast iron pan on a very hot charcoal grill. They were served with a veal jus, emulsions of herbs and the veal jus, as well as a mayonnaise and young larch juice. The sauces were very nice, and the outside of the sweetbread very flavorful and well done. However, I'm not a big fan of sweetbreads, so the soft, spongy inside of the sweetbread was close to inedible to me - yuck. For my taste, this was maybe a 12, but for someone who actually likes sweetbread, it would be an expertly done dish, so 17 might be a more objective rating. Given this wide disparity, I'll skip rating the dish altogether. No fewer than three different wines were served with this dish, one white and two reds, with the sommelier asking us to guess the varieties. Interesting, but sadly even all this alcohol didn't improve my enjoyment of the dish in the end.
The following dish of trout with a sauce of butter and juniper berries was more my speed. At first we thought that the dish lacked taste, but asking for some salt fixed that problem (our server ground the salt over the dish herself - no salt shakers for guests here). After that slight modification, the dish was lovely, a nice subtle fish flavor complemented by the wonderful buttery sauce 17 (without the salt: 14).
Grilled mutton was served with mutton jus and a chimichurri sauce where limes had been replaced by local white currants. On the plus side, the sauce and chimichurri were lovely, but the mutton meat was way too tough. Well, actually cutting it was easy, but it was overly chewy. At least it was not gamey at all 17. (With a better cut of meat, this would have been a 19.)
Our last savory dish were foraged, grilled mushrooms served with a miso sabayon. Excellent 18.
The pre-dessert was a green apple sorbet with fir needles and topped by a toasted marshmallow. The toasting happened right in front of our eyes using a glowing hot coal. The taste and smell reminded me of my childhood - more precisely, of a burnt Christmas tree (don't ask). Overall, light and creamy as well as smoky from the marshmallow 18.
Thickened milk (think: a light panna cotta) was served over a fruit compote that included sea buckthorn, gooseberry, red currants and strawberries, and was surrounded by a red currant "water". A very tasty, nicely fruity and creamy dessert that seemed maybe a bit "simple" for a three-star restaurant 17.
Finally, another bread course. "Buchteln", an Austrian sweet yeast bread, was topped with local honey and served with a bees wax creme seasoned with herbs. An excellent bread, reminiscent of a much lighter monkey bread with a slightly sweet cream, it was a fun (but messy) dish to eat with our hands. And thankfully, the bees wax was very well integrated in the cream, so didn't stand out much 18.
Overall: An excellent dinner that made maximal use of its local seasonal ingredients. Compared to Schloss Schauenstein, which followed a similar approach in the nearby Swiss Alps, I think the Swiss version was superior, but this was still pretty darn good. I loved that everything was local and much thought was given to letting the ingredients shine, without necessarily trying to replicate traditional dishes 18.
Tasting menu