Jatzhütte

Jatzhütte is a 1934-vintage stone-and-larch mountain refuge at 2,500 metres on the Jakobshorn ridge above Davos Platz — directly above the Jakobshorn cable-car top station, with a 360-degree view of the entire eastern Graubünden Alps — and is the canonical Davos mountain-pasture lunch experience. The Aellig family has run the operation since 1962 and the hut is a Bündner farming-family business as much as a restaurant.

The menu is uncompromising mountain food. Bündner Capuns with Beaufort cream; Bündner pizokel with mountain cheese; a slow-cooked Bündner game stew with Polenta; Wiener Schnitzel hand-pounded from veal that arrives by snow-cat each morning; the famous 'Jatzhütte-Apfelstrudel' that uses a 1934 family recipe and runs daily through the winter season.

The room itself is the experience. Original 1934 stone walls, hand-carved larch panelling, three rooms across two floors, a south-facing terrace with two hundred seats and a direct view onto the Pischa massif and the Schiahorn, and a wood-burning Kachelofen stove that runs from late November to mid-April. The wine list is short and almost entirely Bündner — Gantenbein and Donatsch by the glass — at the most reasonable mountain prices in the village.

Service is mountain-warm and family-run — the captains rotate from the Aellig extended family and seasonal staff. The Jatzhütte operates roughly mid-November to mid-April; outside that window the hut is closed. During WEF week the south-terrace lunch is the resort's most photographed daytime social moment and the booking math is harder than it appears.

Jatzhütte is the team-dinner-on-the-mountain room — the format works for a group of eight, the Capuns and Strudel are shared, and the south-terrace lunch with the 360-degree Bündner panorama is the canonical Davos social moment. Book the south-terrace ten-top at 11:30 in February, ride the Jakobshorn cable car up, and run lunch into early afternoon.