Ostaria Tyrol

The hand across two kitchens

Fresh pasta sets the pace before service, rolled for tortelli that carry roe deer and Puzzone di Moena into the room. Tim Benschop, Executive Chef of Ostaria Tyrol in Moena, holds this station while also leading Netts Schützengarten in Sankt Gallen. The remit asks for a steady hand rather than a signature imposed from outside: one kitchen works in a Modern Swiss register with Asian-influenced accents, the other stays close to Ladin and Trentino Tyrolean cooking inside the Post Hotel.

At Ostaria Tyrol, Benschop’s role is menu control and discipline across a room built for mountain appetite, not ceremony. The restaurant’s cooking leans on the family farm, Agritur El Mas, for meat and salumi, then brings in woods-sourced ingredients and the preserved habits of the region: bread made in house, cakes and ice cream from the kitchen, cured meats and cheeses treated as part of the meal’s architecture rather than a prelude. The lineage published here is not a named apprenticeship or a predecessor at the pass. It is a house method, carried through the farm, the hotel, and a menu that keeps local dishes legible.

Game, farm meat, and the daily board

The program is à la carte, with daily off-menu dishes shaped by what has arrived from the farm, the woods, and, at times, Cantabrian waters. The core remains alpine: venison tartare, roe deer tortelli, tagliatelle with deer sauce, canederli, polenta, shank, braised beef cheek with mashed potatoes. These are not decorative references to place. They are the structure of the kitchen.

Technique shows in the way familiar weight is given lift. Celeriac is smoked for a puree under cotechino. Puzzone di Moena becomes fondue for venison tortelli. Beef cheek is braised until the cut gives itself to the spoon. Pasta, bread, preserves, cakes, and ice cream come from the house, a rhythm of bench work that lets the menu stay traditional without becoming fixed. The wine program follows the same line, with regional bottles and a curated cellar for the dishes that want game, fat, salt, and dairy beside them.

Wood, stone, and the mountain room

The room is a tavern in the Tyrolean sense: wood close to the hand, stone holding the temperature, a counterpoint of comfort and utility. Local artists made the furnishings, including chairs shaped with intertwined branch forms and a friendship table that gives the dining room its own piece of craft. It sits in the pedestrian centre of Moena, inside the Post Hotel, but the room keeps the scale of an osteria rather than a hotel dining room.

Service moves through a conversational room, with plates of salumi, tortelli, game, strudel, and forest berries crossing the pass. The place has a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the recognition fits the work because the cooking does not need to step away from its materials to make its case. There is roe deer tortelli with Puzzone di Moena still warm at the centre.