Megu

Megu is the Japanese restaurant of The Alpina Gstaad and the more theatrical of the two Alpina dining rooms (Sommet, the French one-star, runs upstairs). The original Megu opened in New York's Tribeca in 2004 as one of the early-2000s era's defining luxury Japanese restaurants; the Gstaad iteration opened with the Alpina in 2012 and is now the only surviving outpost of the brand in Europe.

The room is ten metres of black-lacquered sushi counter, two private tatami-style booths along the back wall, and a single open-flame robatayaki grill at the kitchen pass. Chef Akira Hirose runs a strict eight-course omakase as the headline experience; à la carte options include the Wagyu A5 robatayaki, a maguro tartare with caviar, and a green-tea-and-sake-cured salmon that has been on the menu since opening.

The sake cellar is the deepest in the French- and German-speaking Alps — eighty bin numbers across daiginjo, junmai-daiginjo, koshu and a small but interesting natural-yeast section. The pairing flight at CHF 180 runs sake-only and is the single most distinctive wine-equivalent programme in Gstaad. There is also a Japanese whisky section — Hibiki, Yamazaki, Karuizawa — for after-dinner that is genuinely interesting.

Service is Tokyo-precise — the captains are Japanese, the sushi-bar timing is choreographed, the sake-warming temperatures are individually adjusted by guest preference. The room runs at high theatrical volume on Saturday nights in February. It is the loudest of the Alpina's dining rooms and the most popular for client-entertaining bookings.

Megu is the close-a-deal room in Gstaad — the omakase format means the dinner is in the chef's hands rather than the conversation's, the sushi-counter seating is the closest the village comes to a chef's-table experience, and the eight-course pace is exactly the length of a wrap-up business dinner. Book the back tatami for privacy; brief the chef on a CHF-budget for the omakase to keep flexibility.