Dishing up St Moritz

The original winter wonderland is celebrating 150 years of Alpine holidays next week, with a gourmet festival featuring London’s top chefs, says Minty Clinch
Mountain excitement: preparations for the St Moritz Gourmet Festival (Picture: Swiss-image.ch/Andy Mettler)
Minty Clinch23 January 2015

Picture St Moritz in the mid-19th century. While ruddy-faced farmers scythed grass for hay and cows grazed in the shadow of St Mauritius’s 12th-century leaning tower, Johannes Badrutt was making history.

As the landlord of Pension Heller, he hosted British aristocrats with the resources to spend their summers climbing in the Alps. Come September, he’d wave them off on their two-week return to London by horse-drawn carriage. But not in 1864. “Come back at Christmas,” he said impulsively. “If you don’t enjoy winter as much as summer, I’ll put you up and pay your fares.”

No one has been able to put names to those bearded pioneers but the results of Badrutt’s acumen are self-evident as St Moritz celebrates the 150th anniversary of the bet. By 1868, Johannes and his equally formidable wife, Maria, had bought Pension Heller and reinvented it as the Engadina Kul — now the newly renovated 173-bedroom Kulm Hotel.

Although nowadays St Moritz has slopes to suit all tastes and standards on four mountains, 60 per cent of winter visitors ignore them.

Great news for skiers and boarders, I reflected, as I blasted down immaculately prepared runs at high speed. At 1850m, the snow quality is excellent. Corveglia, the main area accessed by funicular from St Moritz Dorf or by cable car from St Moritz Bad, is famously mellow, with extensive ego grooming and magnificent lunches at Reto Mathis’s Michelin-starred La Marmite complex at the mid-station.

The reason so few people ski is that there is so much else to do. Craving horses to bet on, the British introduced White Turf races on the lake in 1907, while the Snow Polo World Cup featuring leading players from around the world is an established fixture. Show jumping and cricket on ice, as well as golf on snow, all get a look-in on an action merry-go-round, which also includes a vintage car rally and the terrifying Cresta Grand National.

In the mid-Eighties, Mathis decided that such frenetic activity might benefit from fine dining. Asked by the champagne house Pommery to import a top chef for a week, in 1985 he multiplied the commission by 10 — and the St Moritz Gourmet Festival was born. By way of celebrating the Big 150, 2015 offers the first British Edition, with nine top UK-based cooks sharing kitchens with prominent local chefs. Not surprisingly, seven of them have restaurants in London, with a strong bias towards Michelin in Mayfair. Television star Angela Hartnett will leave Murano to its own devices, while she prepares her dishes in the elegant suites-only Carlton Hotel.

Jason Atherton, who captures the zeitgeist at Pollen Street Social, will be at the Schweizerhof, with Virgilio Martinez, a pioneer of Peruvian cuisine, at Lima Fitzrovia at the Giardino Mountain. Issac McHale, from the Clove Club in Shoreditch, may cause shock waves when he introduces his Young Turk persona to the sober Kempinski clientele in St Moritz Bad.

Indian-born Atul Kochhar, accustomed to feeding British royals at Benares, should feel more at home at the Anglo-centric Kulm, while the Dorchester’s Chong Choi Fong sets up his stove at the Kronenhof in neighbouring Pontresina. At the Gourmet Festival, as in all walks of St Moritz life, Badrutt has the final say, with Claude Bosi, from two Michelin-starred Hibiscus, deploying his Franco-Britannique skills at the Palace.

My own Festival experience started with the popping of massed champagne corks at the Kempinski. The hottest ticket was the Palace Kitchen Party, a late-night foodie extravaganza. With the legendary Kings Club, all gilded chairs and crimson velvet, a mere 10 paces away, I felt that Johannes Badrutt would have wanted me to make a night of it. So I did.

Details: Switzerland

Inghams has seven nights at Hotel Steffani for £1,424 half-board including return flights on Swiss from Heathrow to Zurich, rail transfers and a free six-day lift pass for all guests throughout the season, from March, inghams.co.uk

St Moritz Gourmet Festival British Edition, January 26-30, 2015, stmoritz-gourmetfestival.ch

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