Skiing up an appetite

Plenty of middle-aged men are, as skiers, mere intermediates. As scoffers, though, we have reached a level of almost Olympic expertise. Therefore skiing holidays are judged not by the quality of the snow, but by the standard of the food and drink. Indeed, my happiest memories of skiing are all food-related, beginning – albeit because we were young and the food didn't matter much – with the hotel in the Bulgarian resort of Borovets. In 1988, just two options were on offer for dinner: an omelette literally floating in grease, and a tightly coiled sausage that really belonged at the foot of a lamp post.

Two decades on, as a father of three who long ago reached his plateau as a skier – colliding clumsily with several other people on the same plateau, I might add – my priorities have changed. Paying for a family of five to go skiing can be a painful business. Nevertheless, I am willing to burst through the pain barrier in search of the places that offer the kind of skiing I, in my 47th year, enjoy most, ie the kind with great restaurants attached. So here, with apologies to Borovets (which is omitted, but where I'm quite sure the suspicious sausages have long since gone the way of the Iron Curtain), is my highly subjective gourmet guide to the Alps.

Daringly, it begins not in France or Italy but in the pretty Tyrolean village of St Christoph, in Austria. St Christoph is just up the valley from St Anton, which enjoys a well-deserved reputation as the Mutter und Vater of all après-ski party towns. St Christoph, though its pistes are easily accessible from St Anton, could hardly be more different. It is a genteel place, dominated by one hotel, the Hospiz, which somehow combines bags of Alpine character with extreme chic. It's a neat trick. In my limited experience of the swishest Alpine hotels, chic and character tend to be mutually exclusive.

My family and I stayed at the Hospiz last April. Before we travelled to St Christoph, however, we stayed overnight in Salzburg. Here the epicurean adventure got off to a promising start, with slabs of divine Sachertorte at the Hotel Sacher, a sister to the more famous version in Vienna. I confess that we stayed in Salzburg principally because the children wanted to see where The Sound of Music was filmed, but we eschewed the ghastly sounding themed restaurant offering schnitzel with noodles and warm apple strudel. Gastronomically, we had bigger and better fish to fry.

I had heard that the Hospiz was one of the best places to eat in the Alps, but nobody had told me that it was also one of the finest places to drink. Although the hotel was rebuilt after burning to the ground in 1957, the ancient wine cellar was undamaged. It is as atmospheric as you would expect of a cellar dating from 1386, and contains a small vaulted dining-room where favoured guests, who have included the crowned heads of Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain (not all at the same time), can be assured privacy. The Hospiz cellar contains mostly Bordeaux, of which the hotel's patrician owner, Adolf Werner, is a devotee. I looked yearningly at a 1926 Château d'Yquem, and was duly astonished to learn that he keeps the really valuable stuff elsewhere.

At the adjacent Hospiz-Alm, a lively restaurant at the foot of the nursery slopes, there is a unique wine cellar housing only big bottles, over a thousand of them, from three-litre double-magnums to 18-litre methuselahs. The sommelier, Bruno Craveiro, showed me a Heath Robinson contraption, about the size and horsepower of a small family saloon, for extracting the corks. He also told me proudly that only six methuselahs were produced of the excellent 2000 vintage of that superb Saint-Emilion, Château Cheval Blanc, and all six were snapped up by the Hospiz. Even at €27,000 (over £20,000) each, there is no shortage of interest, but, magnificently, Herr Werner won't always sell. "He needs them to have the passion," explained Bruno.

One can only wonder at the net worth of a man who can afford not to sell a €27,000 bottle of wine, yet Herr Werner and his engaging son Florian reported assiduously for duty every evening at the Hospiz's wonderful restaurant, visiting every table to enquire after our well-being. This both impressed and tickled us; in English, Austrian solicitousness sounds slightly challenging: "Your dinner vos good!?" "The vine vos nice!?"

We encountered the same phenomenon at the weekly Kuchenschmankerl party, when guests are encouraged to tour the kitchens. Florian stood to attention at the door, popping a prawn into everyone's mouth, a curious hybrid of larkiness and formality. We were then made to wear chef's hats and trooped round the kitchen scoffing exquisite canapés of oysters, foie gras and seared salmon. And all this before a vast and wonderful five-course dinner.

There is a cheerful misconception among middle-aged skiers that a few red runs burn up enough calories to cancel out mountains of carbohydrates. It's not so, but if the carbs have passed through the fingers of expert chefs, who cares? And one of the most expert in all the Alps is Norbert Niederkofler, mentor to the London-based Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli. Niederkofler's St Hubertus restaurant at the Hotel Rosa Alpina in San Cassiano, Italy, has two richly deserved Michelin stars, and it was there that I had, unequivocally, the finest meal of my life. Although I'm normally suspicious of seafood so far from the sea, his turbot served on red sausage with gently smoked goose liver was worth learning to ski for, even if it was the Gerostel (don't ask) of braised potatoes and artichokes with black truffles and deep-fried sweetbreads that really made me want to stand on my chair and cheer.

The Rosa Alpina has a similar vibe to the Hospiz, but on a smaller, cosier scale. And its barman can name-drop with the best – when we arrived, the racing-driver Giancarlo Fisichella had apparently just checked out. The previous summer, George Clooney and Rande Gerber (Cindy Crawford's husband) had pitched up out of the blue on motorbikes. It was a quiet Monday evening and the proprietor, Hugo Pizzinini, had given the night-porter the night off. Then Clooney walked in and kept Hugo up until 5am serving vodka.

He got to bed earlier the night I was there, but I did keep him up talking about Ladin, the language of the Dolomites. It varies from village to village. In San Cassiano, thank you is "giulan"; in Val Gardena it is "de gra". Hugo also told me that his grandfather fought for Austria in the First World War, but for Italy in the Second World War. For centuries there has been a tug-of-war over the area, and with backdrops as picturesque as any in the Alps, it's not difficult to understand why.

And with the cuisine also owing its inspiration to several cultures, is it any coincidence that the area has, according to Hugo, the highest concentration of Michelin stars in the Alps? I had two other memorable meals while I was there. One was at the fashionable mountain restaurant Moritzino, where pictures of satisfied diners Ursula Andress, Prince Albert of Monaco and the Aga Khan hang on the walls, and the rightly celebrated house speciality (how could I choose anything else?) is spaghetti with lobster.

The other was at the one-star La Perla, a hotel where the food is almost as divine as that served at the Rosa Alpina. However, the real star of the show there is, as at the Hospiz-Alm, the wine cellar. It is a shrine, complete with dry ice and holograms, to the Italian super-wine Sassicaia: almost certifiably mad, but totally unforgettable.

Happily, unforgettable gastronomy in the Alps does not always come with a massive price tag attached. The Rosa Alpina and Hospiz are definitely at the pricier end of the spectrum. But the Beauregard in La Clusaz is a relatively modest but thoroughly comfortable hotel superbly located yards from a drag-lift, and with its own fine restaurant. La Clusaz is a delightful village in the Massif des Aravis, part of the Savoie region of France and scarcely an hour's drive from Geneva airport. I can't imagine checking into a three-star hotel anywhere else in the world and being ushered straight into the dining-room for a lunch of soupe de poisson, côte de boeuf, and tarte aux pommes.

More than any other cuisine in the Alps, if not the world, Savoyard cooking is not for those concerned about their arteries. Even after a couple of days there, I was practically sweating Reblochon, the local cheese. But with an appetite sharpened by a day's skiing, it is almost beyond human willpower to refuse a large dollop of tartiflette. This is the dish of potatoes, bacon, onion and melted Reblochon that tastes as if every Savoyard grandmother was taught the recipe by her grandmother. In fact, it was invented only in the 1980s by the Reblochon-makers' trade union in a bid to increase sales.

Despite the accessibility of this part of Savoie, and a wonderful variety of slopes, relatively few British skiers visit. Yet why anyone would go to purpose-built resorts such as Tignes instead of real, centuries-old French villages such as La Clusaz, heaven knows. For the skiing, I suppose. But what about the food? At least the many fine hotels and restaurants of the Massif des Aravis are now marketing themselves in English, even if they have some fine-tuning still to do.

At L'Arbe, a marvellous, rustic restaurant in La Clusaz, I could not resist The Piece of Beef with Big Salt and His Marrow Bone. Inevitably, it was delicious.

Traveller's guide

GETTING THERE

Brian Viner flew to Geneva with easyJet (0905 821 0905; www.easyJet.com) from Bristol; the airline also flies there from Belfast, Birmingham, Bournemouth, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted and Newcastle. Several other airlines fly from the UK to Geneva, including British Airways (0844 493 0787; www.ba.com); Bmibaby (0871 224 0224; www.bmibaby.com); Flybe (0871 700 0123; www.flybe.com); Swiss (0845 601 0956; www.swiss.com); and Air France City Jet (0870 142 4343; www.cityjet.com).

To reduce the impact on the environment, you can buy an "offset" through Abta's Reduce My Footprint initiative (020-7637 2444; www.reducemyfootprint.travel).

STAYING THERE

Arlberg Hospiz Hotel, St Christoph, Arlberg, Austria (00 43 5446 2611 118; www.hospiz.com). Double rooms from €400 (£308), half-board.

Rosa Alpina, San Cassiano in Badia, Dolomites, Italy (00 39 047 184 9500; www.rosaalpina.it). Double rooms from €200 (£154), including breakfast.

Beauregard, La Clusaz, France (00 33 4 50 32 68 00; www.hotel-beauregard.fr). Double rooms from €269 (£207), half-board.

MORE INFORMATION

www.stantonamarlberg.com; 00 43 5446 22690

www.suedtirol.info; 00 39 0471 999 999

www.aravis.com; 00 33 4 50 32 65 00

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