I wonder if the cook of Gamskogelhütte had worked in a wine bar before. The “Zaucher Jause,” with its grapes, chestnuts and chutneys looked more like an exquisite snack to accompany wine than a filling cold cuts plate to restore the energy of hikers and skiers.
Being neither a skier nor a hiker (in the traditional sense), I enjoyed the Gamskogelhütte‘s creation thoroughly, thinking how nice it would have been, had the other mountain huts followed the example. The Brettljause was so unusual that I was one step away from the disaster of drinking pumpkin oil out of a schnapps glass, having mistaken it for some sort of a local liqueur. Instead, I poured it into the glass containing a strange salad with beef and pickled cucumbers, and it was the only right decision, making me wonder why the restaurant did not mix those two ingredients from the very beginning.
Apart from the beef in the salad, the only other meat was Speck. The Jause featured three types of cheese, however, and while one of them was bog standard and tasteless, the other two – a soft and a hard one – could have been fine by themselves, but in this case were served with two types of chutneys that matched them perfectly. I also liked the small details, like the herbs around the butter and the little edible flower for decoration.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear some Austrians who tried the Zaucher Jause complain about the lack of calories and the general non-Brettljauseness of the dish. For me, on the other hand, this was a breath of fresh air. The closest Jause I had the pleasure of tasting was the one at the Dachsteinhaus in Ramsau. The only thing I can complain about is the lack of variety. Add some Schweinsbraten and salami – and maybe one more type of cheese – and I will happily give Gamskogelhütte a much higher score.
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