Kriegeralpe

Kriegeralpe is a 1923-vintage stone-and-larch mountain-pasture restaurant at 1,950 metres at the foot of the Madloch chair lift — directly above the Lech valley, with a 270-degree view of the Arlberg massif — and is the canonical Vorarlberg mountain lunch experience. The Stundner family has run the alpe since 1947 (the previous owners had run it since 1923) and the hut is a Vorarlberg farming-family business as much as a restaurant.

The menu is uncompromising mountain food. Vorarlberger Käsknöpfle with three mountain cheeses; a slow-cooked Bregenzerwald lamb stew with Polenta and Tyrolean herbs; a smoked Bregenzerwald-trout tartare; Wiener Schnitzel hand-pounded from veal that arrives by snow-cat each morning; the famous 'Kriegeralpe-Strudel' — an apricot strudel with Schlagobers (whipped cream) that uses a 1923 family recipe and runs daily through the winter season.

The room itself is the experience. The original 1923 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 Madloch ridge, and a wood-burning Kachelofen stove that runs from late November to mid-April. The wine list is short and almost entirely Vorarlberger and Tyrolean — Bregenzerwald sparkling, Vorarlberger Riesling, Tyrolean Blaufränkisch — all by the glass.

Service is mountain-warm and family-run — the captains rotate from the Stundner extended family and seasonal staff. The Kriegeralpe operates roughly mid-November to mid-April for winter and mid-June to mid-September for summer — outside those windows the building is closed. During February-March peak the south-terrace lunch is functionally the social anchor of the resort and the booking math is harder than it looks.

Kriegeralpe is the team-dinner-on-the-mountain room — the format works for a group of eight, the Käsknöpfle and Strudel are shared, and the south-terrace lunch is the canonical Lech 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 Madloch lift up, and run lunch into early afternoon.