It is October 2025, and while the rest of the world is trying to guess who this year’s Nobel prize winners are going to be, I finally found the time to write about the best Brettljausen of 2024. Yes, you have not misread it, I am hopelessly late again, but of course, I have an excuse, and a much better one than a year ago. The truth is, in the beginning of 2025 I found strength and courage to perform the long overdue overhaul of my website’s look. Not that anything was particularly wrong with the old look (in my opinion, at least), but as the technology advanced, my almost 15-year-old site faced a very plausible danger of failing from one day to the next because of some incompatible and unavoidable automatic updates.
True to my luck, my attempt at an upgrade went anything but smoothly. At one point, the site collapsed completely, and I almost gave up the idea of bringing it back. Fortunately, thanks to my hosting provider’s support and the fact that I had subscribed to a daily backup plan at one of my more intelligent moments, the website is now back with a new fresh look and generally seems to work. For reasons unknown, some of the old pages occasionally display weird things – especially for ratings – but this is a fixable problem. All I need to do is to go through 950+ posts and check them one-by-one. Oh well.
Possibly, the site upgrade stress had a negative effect on my appetite, because in 2024 my Brettljause consumption dropped by 5%. On a positive note, the year brought a couple of nice surprises, as you will see in a minute.
The third place and the bronze Brettl for 2024 go to Schwussnerhütte in Seebachtal, Carinthia, a leisurely two-hour hike from the town of Mallnitz. Carinthian Brettljausen are usually tasty but very filling, but Schwussnerhütte surprised me by offering multiple spreads and a generous amount of pickles, plus an unfamiliar dark beer. By the way, Mallnitz region was home to another remarkable Brettljause, the one of Stockerhütte, which looked and tasted more authentic than any other I tried in 2024.
The winner of the silver Brettl is Wia z’haus Lehner in Linz, and seeing it near the top of my Excel sheet was very unexpected. Just a day before I ate Lehner’s Brettljause, the same restaurant served me a complete disaster of a goose, which made me slam it as one of the worst places to have Martinigansl and give it the year’s anti-award. The Brettljause, on the other hand, was extremely big – absolutely unfinishable – and totally weird. I had never seen Brettljausen before featuring cold schnitzels and meat patties in addition to usual hams, cheeses and spreads. It looked as if the cook, driven by some unexplainable surge of generosity, dropped on my plate a bit of everything he had in the kitchen. If the taste were bad, I would have even suspected I was served other visitors’ leftovers.
No matter how much I dislike Linz (it is a very dull city, in my opinion), next year I plan to revisit Wia z’haus Lehner and order a Brettljause again. If it turns out very different from what I experienced last time, you will be the first to know, and believe me, I will show no kindness. In the meantime, however, my Excel sheet leaves me no option but to crown Lehner’s Brettljause the second biggest of all times and the best one in Upper Austria. It is also 2024’s top in terms of size and value for money.
This brings me to the winner. If you want to try the best Brettljause of 2024, you need to be prepared to travel. For the first time ever, the winner is not located in Austria or South Tyrol, but in the Italian region of Piemont, on the shore of Lake Maggiore. It is called La Bottega della pizza di Ornella e Beppe, which literally means “Ornella and Beppe’s Pizza Shop,” and yes, this tiny, hard to find family-run restaurant in the town of Baveno also serves pizzas. However, its mixed plate of cured meats and cheeses is a real treat. Instead of mixing all the ingredients on a single platter, the restaurant serves the dish as two courses: first the meats (all Italian and high quality) and then the cheeses (strong, varied and with a very appropriate mustard). Combined with a local beer, Ornella and Beppe’s Brettljause was a highlight of my holidays and a good reason to revisit Lake Maggiore in the nearest future. In addition to the Golden Brettl of 2024, it also deservingly wins in the taste and variety categories.
A couple of honorable mentions. Weinhof Josef Scharl is the right destination if great atmosphere and service are important to you. It is located in a beautiful place, and its Brettljause is aesthetically pleasing as well. Rotgüldenseehütte, situated in a very picturesque yet quiet area of Salzburg’s Lungau, missed the third place by a couple of points, but got more likes than any other Brettljause I posted to my Instagram in 2024. OK, not completely true – the same number of likes also went to Tábua Rasa, a restaurant on the Portuguese island of Porto Santo not far from Madeira. Slowly but surely, my world of Brettljausen is expanding!
The yearly summary would not be complete without mentioning the worst cold cuts experience, and in that regard, the Antipastiplatte at Rufi’s Restaurant & Bar in Innsbruck was a very easy choice. The lesson learned: if you stay at a hotel and your breakfast buffet includes cold cuts, do not order cold cuts in the evening. You will get exactly the same stuff but in smaller quantities and for more money.