Rifugio Averau

Rifugio Averau is a 1948-vintage stone-walled mountain refuge at 2,413 metres at the foot of the Averau and Cinque Torri massifs, the most photographed mountain panorama in the Dolomites. The Pompanin family has run the rifugio since 1962 (the chef Fabio Pompanin who runs Al Camin in the village is a cousin) and the operation is the canonical Cortina mountain lunch experience.

The menu is uncompromising mountain food. Hand-rolled casunziei (the Ladin beetroot ravioli) with brown butter and poppy seed; a slow-cooked spezzatino di cervo (deer stew) with Cadore polenta; a wood-fired pizza menu that uses a 1962 sourdough mother; the famous Averau apple-strudel that the matriarch Maria Pompanin has baked daily for sixty years. The cooking is portion-large and timed to the lunchtime ski-pause.

The room is the experience. The original 1948 stone walls, hand-carved larch panelling, three rooms across two floors, and a south-facing terrace with two hundred seats and a direct view onto the Cinque Torri. The terrace fills by 12:30 in February and is the canonical Italian Alpine social moment. The wine list is short and almost entirely Italian-Alpine, Pinot Bianco from Alto Adige, Vespaiolo from Vicenza, Marzemino from Trentino, all by the glass.

Service is mountain-warm and family-run, the captains rotate from the Pompanin extended family and the seasonal staff pool. The Averau operates roughly mid-November to mid-April for winter and mid-June to mid-September for summer, outside those windows the building is closed. It is also one of the few Cortina rifugi that does dinner on request, with a sledge-or-snowshoe access from the Scoiattoli lift, and that night-time ascent is the experience the village's serious skiers do once a season.

Rifugio Averau is the team-dinner-on-the-mountain room, the format works for a group of eight, the casunziei or strudel is shared, and the south-terrace lunch is the canonical Cortina social moment. It is also the right answer for a small-group birthday celebration in February: book the south-terrace ten-top at 11:30, ride the Scoiattoli lift up, and run lunch into early afternoon. The Averau will reserve the table for a six-hour window in peak weeks.