Haute cuisine in Kitzbühel

Kitzbühel | Issue 56 | Winter 2024/2025

The Chamois to Marco Gatterer is “the best meat in the world.” Even darker and spicier than venison, a sweetish nutty undertone and so very, very lean that you have to add some lardo to the chamois-butter slabs in order for it to keep juicy. The game meat coming from the mountains is for this star culinary chef a signature dish. It stands for his own “Alpine Fine Dining” which is celebrated to the hilt at Kitzbühel’s Berggericht.

The cozy interior of the Berggericht restaurant, in the Kitzbühel city center

Marco Gatterer is a Tirolean. He showcases just what unbelievable products his homeland has on offer: alpine prawns, rainbow trout, mountain lambs, brook char. Gatterer learned his earliest lessons in France, but his intrinsic tastes stem from the mountains. For Gatterer, each and every product has an inimitable personality.

The toque-awarded chef de cuisine is still young, just 35 years old. But he already has 20 years of experience under his belt, and that in star-studded kitchens such as those of Heinz Reitbauer, Martin Sieberer or Silvio Nickol. They taught him just how much natural products can tolerate haute cuisine, and that Alba truffles, Ossetra caviar and fresh turbot can bring wonderful-tasting worldliness into regional menus. Gatterer wants to become the Tastebuds-Ambassador of his homeland, that’s a far cry from being dogmatic.

In actual fact, for a top-notch chef de cuisine he is remarkably unpretentious. He cooks precisely the way he likes to and which seems best to him. “Genuine craftsmanship” is what he wants to present on the plate. Things are cooked in the oven, not sous-vide. Gatterer longs for the aromas of roasting. Whereas other top chefs develop and devise newfound menus in their innermost culinary laboratory, Gatterer trusts in his own sensory receptors. “This is my life,” he reflects in Kitzbühel’s “Fine Dining Living Room,” which is what locals have nicknamed the Berggericht restaurant. Regional, startlingly new, many-layered – Marco Gatterer brings freshness into this dignified and venerable ambience.