PAVO

Small plates at the mountain pass

The menu moves in small plates, passed and returned across the table. Simon Schlachter, the chef at PAVO in Pfronten, built the room for that rhythm: formal service, a tasting structure, and a kitchen that sends out a sequence meant to be shared rather than guarded as individual courses. He is an Allgäu native who started formal training at fifteen at the Michelin-starred Hotel Königshof in Munich and trained only in starred houses after that, most recently under the three-star chef Andreas Caminada at Schloss Schauenstein in Fürstenau. What he took from it is structure rather than flourish, and PAVO asks that same discipline of a format where every dish has to carry its place in the progression.

The work is less about a single signature plate than about keeping the pass alert through a long sequence. PAVO holds one Michelin star in the 2025 Guide, and it sits inside Boutique Hotel Blaue Burg on Falkenstein, above Pfronten, alongside the more regional Restaurant 1250 in the same property, which the Schlachter family runs as a tiered pair. PAVO is the tighter station: intimate, formal, scenic, and built around a modern German kitchen that allows international inflection without letting the room lose its alpine footing.

Up to 18 dishes, built to share

PAVO's tasting menu can run to up to 18 small dishes. That number matters because the method depends on scale: not a parade of large plates, but a sequence of smaller decisions, each one needing clarity before the next arrives. The restaurant describes a sharing tasting menu, and the pass has to make that conviviality precise. A dish has to read from the hand to the table, then survive being divided, tasted in conversation, and folded back into the pace of the meal.

The cooking is modern and locally sourced in its starting point, with a curated wine program alongside it. One named dish, kingfish with corn, shows the kitchen's willingness to pull sweetness and a cleaner, international register into the alpine setting. The point is not fusion as decoration. It is a way of giving the menu lift while keeping the format measured. Small plates expose overwork quickly; too many components crowd the gesture. PAVO's discipline is in letting each plate carry enough detail for fine dining while still behaving like something meant to pass between hands.

The room above Pfronten

The room looks out over the Allgäu Alps, and the work at the pass happens with that height in the background. PAVO is reached by a private road on Falkenstein, a detail that shapes the feeling before the first plate lands, but the service keeps the focus close: the counter of exchange is the table, the movement is plate by plate, glass by glass, course by course. The atmosphere is quiet enough for the sequence to register.

Inside, the polish is visible without becoming theatre. Formal service carries the sharing format, so the staff have to explain enough and then step back. That restraint suits the kitchen. The plates arrive as a succession of small commitments rather than a display of abundance, and the mountain view does not need to be overplayed. It is already there, beyond the glass, while the pass keeps its timing.

A house held to its sequence

PAVO sets itself the same test every service: keep a long menu exact without making it stiff. Schlachter's station is tied to that discipline, and the house rests on whether the shared format holds its edge across every small plate. What answers the question is the kingfish with corn arriving at the table in PAVO's sequence intact.