I actually felt great anticipation for a restaurant with the name Brettlalm. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a rather nondescript place squeezed between two cable car stations. Like Coburger Hütte, Brettlalm is a self-service restaurant, in which you place the order and carry your drink to your table yourself, while the food gets delivered later on. Unlike Coburger Hütte, Brettlalm is not a real mountain hut, and has inside a self-service area more common to restaurants at the top cable car stations of major mountains or office canteens. There are fridges for drinks, shelves labeled “Cold dishes,” snack stands and a couple of cash registers, all looking quite unused. Perhaps all this serves its purpose well in winter, when Brettlalm, located in the middle of a ski track, must be enjoying a huge inflow of customers. Or perhaps it had just been an idea that never really worked out.
The Brettljause of Brettlalm is simple, nicely arranged and quickly forgettable. The two ingredients that caught my attention were the Speck and the Bergkäse, but while in Tyrol you kind of expect these ingredients to be good, even if they come from a supermarket. It was also nice to see a few slices of Leberkäse on the plank, which is a rare sight and a much better alternative to Extrawurst. The rest was, well, boring. The Toastschinken was the final straw for me – who on earth would dare dropping perfectly rectangular toast ham on a Brettljause served with oval slices of bread?
It could have been worse, of course, but despite my full understanding of troubles restaurants have to go through these days to make money, Brettlalm’s Brettljause left an impression of having been prepared with the sole idea of achieving as high a profit margin as possible. When you see the restaurant’s location, you understand the business sense of this all, but honestly, a cool name like Brettlalm should be reserved for a much more authentic place.
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