Klösterle

Since 2019 in the Walserhaus kitchen

The preserves face the mountains before service, jars from the year set into the kitchen’s rhythm. At Klösterle in Lech, chef Jakob Zeller holds the management and the pass with chef Ethel Hoon, a Singaporean chef-owner who has made western Austria her home. Their work sits in a 400-year-old Walser building in the Zuger Tal, where the house asks for mountain cooking without ornament and gives the plate its depth through what the region can provide.

Zeller has worked in chef de cuisine and management at Klösterle since 2019. His register is Alpine, shaped by the discipline of the Austrian Alps and by producers working with quality, sustainability, and respect for nature. Hoon brings another line of experience into the same kitchen: born in Singapore, she later interned at Restaurant Fäviken in Sweden from 2015, and speaks of Klösterle as a mixture of where she and Zeller are from. He is from northern Italy; she is from Singapore. The house is not a biography translated onto a menu. It is a practice shaped by several places, then tested against Lech, weather, pantry, and service.

Fondue, farmer's duck, and the local larder

The program has returned to fondue and Bauernente, farmer's duck, as winter anchors, with fried char, chanterelles, goat, and seasonal specialties giving the kitchen room to follow the valley. The approach is farm-to-table in the plain sense: regional ingredients, local sourcing, organic leanings where they fit, and a refusal to import out-of-season garnish for the sake of a plate looking current. Hoon’s own line is practical: they do not want baby carrots from a greenhouse in southern Spain when the closer product tastes better.

The method keeps to Bergküche, clear mountain cooking, but not as a museum exercise. Zeller has described their cooking as intuitive, with dishes created in the process. That kind of looseness only works when the bench has discipline beneath it: preserves from the year, a pantry tuned to the season, pans and bowls set for sharing, and a wine list curated to sit with the food rather than pull attention away from it. There are Monday pop-up evenings in the house’s rhythm, including Asian or pizza themes every three weeks, but the center remains the same: what the local producers bring, what the weather permits, what the room can hold.

The room keeps the mountain close

The dining room works like a Walserhaus stube, warm wood paneling, close tables, and the kind of alpine intimacy that comes from an old building rather than a designed effect. Service moves at an upscale casual pace, with the format leaning toward family style and set menus, so the table becomes part of the method. Fondue asks for reach. Duck asks for carving and passing. Char brings the room back to the plate after the view has done its work.

Outside, the Zuger Tal gives the house its frame; inside, the counter, the pass, and the dining room keep scale small. The noise stays conversational, which matters in a place where shared dishes carry much of the evening. The mountain views are not decoration here. They are the reference point for the larder, the wood, the appetite, and the winter return of Bauernente.