The Table

Why there is only one seating

Our kitchen has four cooks and a wood-fired range that takes ninety minutes to reach working heat. Running two dinner services would mean holding food, and holding food at altitude means either drying it out or drowning it in sauce. So we serve everyone at 18:30, in one room, from one menu, and the range is banked by half past nine.

The menu is written at four in the afternoon, once the valley delivery has arrived. Four courses: something pickled or cured, a soup or grain dish, one main, one sweet. There is no choice of main because the farms send what they send — a hogget shoulder, a whole pike-perch from the lower lake, a wheel of alpine cheese for the vegetarian table. If a dish will not work for you, tell the desk by three and the kitchen cooks you something else properly rather than apologising later.

“A mountain kitchen is not a restaurant with a view. It is a household that happens to feed forty people.”

Breakfast

Laid out from seven on the long oak sideboard: dark rye and a lighter valley loaf baked in the lodge oven at half past five, cured trout from the Sarnetal smokehouse, three cheeses, boiled eggs, thick yoghurt with the previous autumn’s plum compote, and porridge cooked with milk rather than water. Eggs to order come from the kitchen hatch. Coffee is a single-origin roasted in the valley; the tisane is house-blended lime flower and mountain thyme.

If you are walking, ask the night porter to build you a hill lunch. It arrives in a waxed cloth: bread, cheese, hard sausage or a nut alternative, a boiled egg, fruit, and a square of dense honey cake that survives being sat on.

The larder counter

Between midday and five the kitchen keeps a counter beside the reading room: two soups, a hot pie, a salad of whatever is crisp, and cake. It exists for early arrivals, late walkers and anyone who has spent the afternoon in the thermal halls and does not want to dress for dinner. You can eat there in a bathrobe and nobody will mind.

A representative week

These are real menus from a February week, printed here so you know what to expect rather than as a promise — the valley decides, not us.

Monday

Deep-winter cooking

FirstCured trout, fermented cucumber, dill oil
SecondBarley and celeriac broth, brown butter
MainHogget shoulder, forty minutes of quince, black kale
SweetBuckwheat tart, sour cream, honey

Thursday

Lake and larder

FirstWarm cheese pastry, pickled elder shoots
SecondRoast squash, brown lentils, sage
MainPike-perch baked in paper, leeks, spring water butter
SweetPlum compote, thick yoghurt, toasted rye crumb

The cellar

Wine, and the reason the list is short

Sixty-two labels, all from within four hours of the pass, plus one sherry and one madeira for the cheese. Half the list is available by the glass because a four-course dinner with one main course does not need a sommelier’s theatre — it needs two whites and two reds that work. Non-alcoholic pairings are taken seriously: a fermented apple and thyme cordial, birch water, and a bitter hop tonic made in Sarnetal.

Alcohol service stops at 23:30 in the reading room bar. Staff will decline service to anyone who has had enough, in the main building and in the annexe alike, and that is not negotiable.

Altitude

Eat and drink differently up here

At 1,684 metres alcohol arrives faster, dehydration is quicker and appetite is often larger. Water jugs are on every table and refilled without asking. If you have come up from sea level that morning, the kitchen recommends the soup, one glass, and an early night before any long evening in the quarter.

Reserving a place

Residence guests have a table held automatically; tell the desk if you will be out. Non-resident visitors can be seated when the room allows, which in practice means most weeknights and rarely a Saturday. There is no online reservation system on this website — write to the lodge desk and a person will answer with the honest availability for your dates.

We publish no prices, packages or offers here. Nothing is sold through these pages, and nobody will ask you for a card number.

Write to the lodge desk Thermal halls