SAN CASSIANO: The St Hubertus, a three Michelin star restaurant will close for refurbishment at the end of March and it is unlikely to reopen in its current format. Speaking about the closure of the restaurant, Norbert Niederkofler, executive chef of the restaurant the the Hotel Rosa Alpina in San Cassiano said that the closure for renovation of the restaurant is a consequence of the owner’s decision to renovate the hotel in which it is located.
The chef had helped reshape the restaurant from a humble mountain village restaurant into one of the top restaurants in Italy and the world.
“This project has been in the pipeline for months. I fully support the decision to revise the concept behind the structure and the cuisine and I am offering my experience in this regard. With regard to the Michelin stars, it will only be this that will define future possible assignments. I will do everything I can to confirm them, said the South Tyrolean chef.
He said that together with the owners, he has not yet defined which concept to tackle for a possible reopening of the St Hubertus. “From the end of March, I will concentrate on continuing the projects that I have been following for years with the company Mo-Food of which I am co-owner with Paolo Ferretti. Among these, I will continue to support the Cook the Mountain philosophy, first of all with the development of AlpiNN Food Space and Restaurant at Plan de Corones In addition, I will continue to promote the training of young people, including through the three-year course in Mountain Enogastronomic Sciences with the University of Bolzano. I will also continue to develop the Horto restaurant in Milan,” he said.
Niederkofler added that he will also launch new initiatives linked to CARE’s sustainable gastronomic idea in the region, otuside the region and outside Italy about which I am obliged to maintain confidentiality for new,” he added.
Norbert Niederkofler loved the mountains but wanted to travel so he left South Tyrol to cook his way around the world. In 1993 he returned to the region and was given the opportunity to be chef at the pizzeria of the Hotel Rosa Alpina in San Cassiano at the base of the Dolomite mountains in 1994.
At the time, the hotel restaurant was a humble pizzeria and signs of this are still visible in the restaurant kitchen of this 3 Michelin star restaurant. Norbert took this restaurant and slowly but surely has turned the St Hubertus into one of Italy’s culinary meccas and one of the latest Italian restaurants to get the 3 Michelin star accolade.
To get there, he’s had to change direction and that breakthrough came with the birth of his first son a few years ago. Prior to that, he had been cooking with some of the best ingredients he could get his hands on from langoustines to caviar and fois gras.
“The birth of my son made me realise that I needed to change my ways,” Norbert said. It may have been a blessing for the chef whose been following the ‘Cook the Mountain’ philosophy which has given him more freedom despite the constraints he placed on himself to use ingredients that grow on the mountains nearby.
“Cook the mountain is a philosophy to cook with what is near you,” he told Food and Wine Gazette as we were driving from one of the vegetables gardens which supply the restaurant with produce. “That might sound like a cliché but if I was by the sea I would cook with what the sea provides me with,” he said.
Being in the mountain means he need back-up plans to ensure that he has produce all year round. The weather may change to the extent that produce might not grow in one area and that is the reason why he has a number of small suppliers from where he buys all the vegetables for his restaurant.
“Having abundant fruits and vegetables means that you need to work with what you have. There are periods where nature provides you with abundance and you need to be ready to make use of what is available.”
It was on one of these occasions that the Italian chef came up with the idea of making ketchup out of plums. Plums have a similar acidity to tomatoes and they were in abundance so he worked to make use of this abundance. The result is the sweetness of ketchup without any additional sugars other than the natural sugar of the plums. He served it to children and they could not really tell the difference. Today, it is also served as a mountain ‘bruschetta’ in one of the first dishes at the three Michelin star restaurant.
If your taste buds are not attuned or you have not been warned, it is unlikely that you will realise that it is plums and not tomatoes that you are eating.
It is this coherence and study of the terroir around him that has made the chef famous. With his events Cook the Mountain and Ethical Days he has been exploring together with colleagues ways to practice what he preaches.
You will not find lemon or olive oil in his kitchen or in his cooking because it is not something that grows in the area. Instead he makes use of fermentation for acidity and butter or grape seed oil for fat.
He has used mountain lentils to make soy sauce and when it comes to the use of fish or animals, he will adopt a no waste principle even going to the extent of frying scales to add texture and crispness to a fish dish.
Norbert has a team that visits the farmers to know exactly what is growing and what they can pick and work with in the restaurant kitchen.
Norbert was born in 1961 in Luttago, a small town in the heart of the Dolomites. His parents owned a hotel for the skiers in winter and climbers in summer, and he was always exploring the outdoors. Despite his love for the region, he wanted to see the world and thought becoming a chef would be a good opportunity to travel.
After finishing his studies at a culinary college in Tegernsee,Germany, Norbert worked in London, Zurich and Milan, before arriving in Munich.to work with Eckart Witzigmann, his greatest mentor. Eckart taught him how to respect nature and its produce to achieve culinary perfection. After seven years in Munich, he travelled to New York and learnt the secrets to innovation under restaurateur David Bouley.
It was here that he truly began to develop his own style, but after a while he started to miss the mountains and flavours of his hometown. He returned in 1993 and started working at Castel Colz in La Villa for a year.
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