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.