10 European mountain restaurants for a great ski lunch

You have to admire the determination of a restauranteur who chooses to open a restaurant halfway up, or even at the top of a mountain! The challenges are enormous simply getting the ingredients up there for the fantastic dishes they serve and for the stocking of the bar and this adds hugely to the running costs. Of course, everything that goes up, must come down, that’s all the rubbish, and often a skidoo is the only way and requires endless trips.

The rewards for a successful restauranteur can be very rewarding. Shortly after I started in the ski business in the mid-1990s there were rumours that one of the owners of a slope-side Courchevel restaurant had been arrested. His misfortune had been a loose association to “someone” the French police had been investigating, which resulted in the restaurant owner coming under investigation himself. The restaurant concerned was taking so much cash, from the newly arrived Russian oligarchs that the…