Ecco St. Moritz

Control before the plate

Reto Brändli calibrated texture and rest as Chef at Ecco St. Moritz in St. Moritz, after an apprenticeship at Waldhaus Sils and cook roles with Dario Ranza and Rolf Fliegauf in Ticino. Reto Brändli held this kind of station through sequence: prep, repetition, service, and the discipline of working clean when the room expects every course to land without noise. His formation passed through Crissier as an intern chapter, then into fine dining posts at Schloss Schauenstein and Cà d’Oro at Grand Hotel des Bains Kempinski in St. Moritz from 2020 to 2022. At Ecco, that training met a winter dining room inside Giardino Mountain, where the kitchen worked within a set-menu format and a house language built around aroma cuisine. Brändli has since moved through other dining rooms, including Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer from 2022, so his time here belongs in the past tense. The useful continuity is not a tenure claim; it is the register of the cooking. Foie gras, rhubarb, and even hand-kneaded pizza dough in his wider work point to the same concern: what happens before the plate reaches the table, and how much the hand can decide before the guest sees anything.

Aroma cuisine in winter sequence

The program at Ecco St. Moritz turns on purist flavor work rather than decorative abundance. The restaurant’s set menu has been described in ranges from 3 to 8 courses, with another stated frame of 4 to 7 courses; either way, the architecture gives the kitchen room to build progression, contrast, and return. Dishes associated with the house include marinated goose liver with pistachio and beetroot, parsley soup with North Sea lobster, Atlantic sea bass with cauliflower, and Bresse pigeon with crispy sweet corn. Those combinations show the method clearly: richness cut with earth, brine carried by herb, white fish set against a soft vegetable field, game given sweetness and crackle. The cooking is modern, but the control is older than the styling. It depends on seasoning held back until it has a reason, textures spaced so the mouth can read them, and plates that do not confuse motion with depth. The room holds 2 Michelin stars in the 2025 Guide and 18 GaultMillau points, but the awards matter here only because the discipline survives the scrutiny.

The room inside Giardino Mountain

The dining room sits within Giardino Mountain, in Champfèr, with St. Moritz close enough to shape the season and the audience. It is a former chapel, intimate in scale, with soft lighting, warm woods, clean lines, and a quietness that suits a tasting menu better than theatre. The pass has to work against that calm, not disturb it. Plates leave in measured order, service keeps the formal frame, and the room lets small decisions register: the sheen on goose liver, the temperature of soup, the way cauliflower softens the sea bass without taking it over. Outside, the Engadine gives the place its winter pressure. Inside, the bench stays narrow. That contrast is part of the house’s charm.

What remains in the craft

Brändli’s own stated aim, “I don’t cook to impress — I want to evoke emotions,” fits the best work associated with this room because it refuses ornament as proof. His later signature language around Spring Collection 2026 points to season, sequence, and progression rather than a single fixed plate. At Ecco St. At Ecco St. Moritz, the lasting image is still concrete: beetroot in Giardino Mountain's quiet former chapel.