SanBrite

SanBrite is the gastronomic project of Riccardo Gaspari and his wife Ludovica Rubbini — a 2017-opened farmhouse-and-restaurant complex two kilometres from the Cortina centre in the Alverá hamlet, holding one Michelin star and a Michelin Green Star (the rare sustainability rating) under Gaspari's Ladin-led modern-Alpine cooking. The restaurant is built into a converted 18th-century 'malga' — a high-pasture summer dairy — and the seven-table dining room features a single full-height picture window onto the Tofane massif.

Gaspari's cooking is built almost entirely around the farm's own production. The malga still functions as a working high-pasture dairy in summer; the cheeses on the cheese cart are the malga's; the meats are from a herd of fifteen Ladin-cattle that Gaspari and Rubbini raise themselves; the vegetables are from a half-hectare permaculture garden behind the building; the bread is a 200-year-old sourdough mother. Signatures include a 24-hour-cured fjorìna trout with potato-and-pine-needle emulsion; a hand-cut tagliatelle with 36-month Vezzena cheese and black truffle; a slow-roasted Ladin-cattle short rib with juniper jus; the famous 'gelato di latte di pecora' that the malga's sheep produce a single ten-day window of in early August.

The wine list is unexpectedly serious for a seven-table farmhouse — 600 references with a deep Italian Alps spine (Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli, Valle d'Aosta), a tightly chosen Ladin and Slovenian section that is the deepest in any Italian Alpine restaurant, and a small but interesting natural-wine programme. Sommelier Federico Costa runs the floor and the pairing flight at €130 is the best wine value in any one-star room in northern Italy.

Service is the Gaspari-Rubbini family directly — Ludovica runs the floor, Riccardo runs the kitchen, the captains rotate through the dining room and the malga depending on the season. The room is silent in a way that is rare in Italian restaurants and the pacing is unhurried. SanBrite is also the only Michelin-starred farm-to-table dining experience in the Dolomites that does not come with the country-house premium. It is, by quiet international consensus, the most original kitchen in the entire Italian Alps.

SanBrite is the proposal-grade table for a Cortina trip — the seven-table room means total privacy, the single-window view onto Tofane is among the most photographed dinner views in northern Italy, and the family-run pacing accommodates a slow-moving evening. Brief Ludovica three days ahead; the team have done dozens of proposals across the years and time the moment with the cheese course from the malga's own production.