«I have always been a cook, I love the mountains, I love flying and I love InAlto!». This is how chef Alfio Ghezzi, patron of the Senso Mart restaurant in Rovereto, selected in the Michelin Guide Italy 2023 with a Michelin star, begins when he announces his next project: InAlto Alfio Ghezzi Dolomites, a place where he can combine his passion for cooking with love for high altitudes which will open on December 3 on Col Margherita.
“Cooking at 2500 meters requires a sense of limits, which is essential to offer not only a reassuring cuisine but above all a cuisine shared with the landscape and with good food practices. Dishes designed and cooked responsibly respecting the seasons and the short supply chain, an honest and concrete cuisine. All this translates into my work with the idea that the simple vision of food, or rather essentiality, is a founding trait of all the communities that live in the highlands, but it is also and above all a key to reflection and understanding of our being conscious cooks», says Alfio Ghezzi.
InAlto, Alfio Ghezzi’s new restaurant in the San Pellegrino ski area
This is the philosophy that the chef brings to InAlto, the refuge that stands at 2,514 meters on Col Margherita, in the San Pellegrino Ski Area. Located at the start of one of the most adrenalinic black slopes of the Dolomiti Superski, La Volata, InAlto offers a careful proposal, structured for the whole day, from morning to evening, according to everyone’s needs, for a breakfast, for a lunch break, an aperitif or a delicious snack on days in the snow but also in the middle of summer.
The location, integrated into the top station of the Col Margherita cable car which starts from Passo San Pellegrino, is surrounded by a unique natural amphitheater: from the south wall of the Marmolada, to Mount Pelmo, from the majesty of the Civetta up to the Pale di San Martino.
What does it propose
The proposal, explains the chef, focuses on genuine dishes conceived and cooked by the young resident chef Gianluca Pittigher with responsibilities that go beyond appearances as an end in itself or the more obvious aspects of tradition to concentrate instead with a fresh and curious look on the good .
«We observe the seasons conscientiously, we are committed to making the raw materials travel as little as possible», Ghezzi underlines again.
Marco Donazzolo, Gianluca Pittigher and Alfio Ghezzi at InAlto
Marco Donazzolo, restaurant manager, has also developed the same thought for drinks, treasuring the synergy born with the chef, thus creating an offer that is coherent with the cooking philosophy and with the identity of the refuge. Marco has chosen wines mainly from artisan winemakers, local beers, distillates of the Alpine tradition, only Italian, and nectars from the Alfio Ghezzi Anthology line.
Location
InAlto rises in a scenario of extraordinary beauty where the air is as pure as in the Arctic. In this natural balcony, at an altitude of 2,514 metres, ozone values are recorded slightly lower than those of Ny Ålesund (Svalbard Islands, Norway), the northernmost inhabited country in the world, measured by the instruments of the Zeppelin station. Above Falcade and the San Pellegrino Pass, in fact, the air is as clean as in Ny Ålesund, where the Cnr’s Dirigibile Italia base is located. The data emerge from the Col Margherita observatory, an outpost of the Cnr for the study of the chemical composition of atmospheric aerosols in the eastern Alps. A scientific excellence that works in synergy with the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
An interior of InAlto, the new signature restaurant in the San Pellegrino Falcade ski area
Col Margherita is an unmissable stop for sports lovers, InAlto is also the hub of a series of trekking routes and others dedicated to two-wheel enthusiasts such as the San Pellegrino Bike Trail Karpos which include three single trails and two flow trails which intersect each other between Veneto and Trentino, between the Biois Valley and the Val di Fassa. Routes that make the most extreme mountain within reach of bikes with varying degrees of difficulty.
Don’t miss Col Margherita Park, a theme park designed and built in collaboration with Muse, the Science Museum of Trento, which is divided into an easy route that tells the story and formation of the Dolomites and the brand new botanical park.
The opening
The new restaurant starting on December 3rd will be open from Monday to Sunday from 9 to 16. It will be accessible by the Col Margherita cable car, which allows you to easily reach the refuge in a few minutes from the San Pellegrino Pass. Or on foot along path 658 up to the fork fork of Pradazzo and then taking the path up to 695. The opening of InAlto, in summer and winter, will coincide with that of the ski lifts of the San Pellegrino Ski Area.
Contacts: [email protected] phone +393440491503.