Stubai Mountain Restaurants
The Stubai ski area offers an excellent choice of mountain eating and drinking from haute-cuisine to good quality self-service and coffee and snack bars. The star turn is the Schaufelspitz restaurant at Eisgrat on the Stubai Glacier.
Stubai Glacier Mountain Restaurants
This is the Tirol and standards are, as you would expect, high at almost every level. Add to that traditional and modern Tirolean charm and you have here in Stubaital a really good offering of mountain huts.
At Stubai Glacier for Alpine character a must-visit is the Dresdnerhutte, a lovely old mountain hut by the Fernau middle station that serves decadent hot chocolate with rum, apple strudel, as well as real Tyrolean food. This also has some accommodation- there are bunk rooms, hot showers, an internet computer and atmospheric taxidermy snagged from the surrounding mountains. The cozy wooden out-hut serves snacks and drinks, and is a perfect suntrap.
For modern table service or out on the sun terrace, Zur Goldenen Gams restaurant in Gamsgarten mid-station is an attractive, large post and beam restaurant — handy for ski school meeting and the Intersport Gamsgarten, where you can drop your skis and boots at the end of the day. Also good childrens dining facilities in the Gamsgarten’s self-service restaurant.
Eat and drink at Jochdole on Top of the Tyrol, the highest mountain restaurant around. It’s a chic and modern counter service restaurant that juts out of the glacier over a precipice. From one gondola to another, up here at 3,150 metres they claim you can see “almost to Venice”, so hands up if you spot St Mark’s!
Top marks though goes to the Schaufelspitz restaurant set at 2900m at Eisgrat. This is evolved Austrian cuisine of a very high order (Gault-Millau have awarded a Toque) accommodated in a slick modern interpretation of wood glass and steel. Very stylish indeed and as good as anywhere else in the Alps at this end of the spectrum .
Nextdoor the equally stylish Zum Steinbock café serves up coffees, pastries and schnapps. As pleasant a pit-stop as you can get in the high Alps. The Kaiserschmarren here is to die for. Also here is the Eisgrat self-service restaurant, which is as nice as self-service gets in the Tirol.
The Bodelehutte above Fernau on the way up to Schaufelnieder is another good pit-stop venue for a snack and a drink. The Schneekristall Bar on the Gamsgarten terrace upstairs is a popular après ski hangout. Outdoors and surrounded by a glass rondel, on a sunny afternoon this is a great spot.
For an apres drink, an absolute gem on the road back below Stubai Glacier is the Tschangelairalm – an old wooden pasture Alm that has not been brought into the 21st century yet. Stop for a drink or a simple meal and you are transported back in time to the rural origins of these beautiful hills.
Schick2000 Mountain Restaurants
And over at Schlick 2000 as well there is a good choice of mountain huts and self-service restaurants. Of particular note the Sennjoch hut is as nice place to chill outside on a sunny day or snug inside on a more wintery one.
The Panorama restaurant at Kreuzjoch is a large self-service facility which serves big hearty tirolean mountain fare and, as its name suggests, commands fabulous views from its perch above 2100m. Lower down above the middle station and adjacent to Big Ron’s Kinderland, the Bruggeralm serves rustic local fare with charm and ambiance.
Photo: TVB Stubai | Stubaier Gletscher | Andre Schoenherr