Ecco (**)

Rolf Fliegauf’s two-star restaurant is located in the Giardino hotelin Champfèr, near Sankt Moritz. The Giardino hotel is part of Design hotels and therefore part of Marriott. The hotel has a very trendy interior.

Ecco has been awarded 2 stars by Michelin and has 18 Gault-Millau points.

The hotel is located in a former girls’ school. Ecco is based in the chapel of the former school. The restaurant is decorated in a very trendy way. There are engravings in the wall. Drawings of vines, devils and other images. The ceiling also has carvings and beautiful lamps hang from the ceiling. We love this atmosphere.

The evening of our visit, a guest chef is in the kitchen for the Sankt Moritz Gourmet festival 2022. Chef Patrick Mahlerof restaurant Focus (**) from Lucerne stands next to Rolf Fliegauf in the kitchen. We are sure this will be a great evening.

Menu

Tonight there is a 6-course or 9-course menu. We choose 6 courses because we think 9 dishes are too much. The great thing is that we can choose our 6 dishes from the 9 courses of the large menu. You don’t see this often!

We start the evening with a glass of champagne from Laurent Perrier. The champagne fits very nicely with the various amuse-bouches that we receive.

As a first amuse-bouche we get a vegetable cracker with buckwheat. What a very nice presentation. A bowl with branches, stones and tree bark and a leaf of vegetables in the branches. The presentation is grand.

Then we get a macaroon with mushroom mousse. The macaroon is also made from mushrooms. What a very good amuse-bouche

At the same time as the macaron, we get a tartelette filled with snow crab and caviar. The crab has a bit of acidity, there is lemon through the crab. Very tasty, especially due to the freshness of the lemon and the saltiness of the caviar.

Then comes a tartelette with pig and truffle. The tartelette is filled with pulled pork and topped with fresh truffle. Again a nice combination. I never thought of pig in combination with truffle, but these chefs have come up with very nice combinations.

As a last amuse-bouche we get poached oyster in dashi. The oyster is covered in an oyster jelly and oyster mousse and swims in a green dashi gravy. The saltiness is well present.

We are pleasantly surprised by the amuse-bouche.

6-course menu

First we take Hiramasa kingfish. Because there are two cooks in the kitchen, we get two different preparations of king fish. One from Ecco’s chef and one from the guest chef. We start with Patrick Mahler’s kingfish. This one is very surprising. Onion and dill are served with the fish. The vinaigrette is very tasty and goes well with the onion and fish. There is also pickled radish. A top dish that surprises us time and again in terms of taste experience.

The second king fish dish is sprinkled with dashi and provided with a sesame crunch and fish eggs. There is also radish with this, it has not been cultivated. The second dish has a slightly fresher taste than the first dish. It is very difficult to choose which dish is tastier. The first is surprising, the second is a bit more balanced.

We drink a Panzale Isola dei Nuraghi from Sardinia. A fresh/slightly sweet wine that goes well with the two types of kingfish.

The second dish is Patrick Mahler’s signature dish: duck liver ice cream with beef tartar and beetroot. A very nice dish is served A package made of beet jelly lies on the plate sprinkled with cassis powder. The package contains quite a bit of duck liver ice cream and beef tartare. The tartare remains pure, nice pieces of meat of the same size. The duck liver ice cream is divine. What a combination with the beetroot and the tartare. We enjoy every bite.

We drink the same wine as with the first dish. The wine is slightly sweet and therefore goes well with the duck liver.

As a third dish we take Norwegian Lobster (Langoustine) with pumpkin in a lobster bisque. The langoustine is fried and nice pink. This one is in a very strong lobster and shellfish bisque. The bisque is slightly made with tomato and has therefore a nice brown/red color. On top of the fish is pumpkin in acid and below the fish are square cut cubes of pumpkin in an Indian curry. This gives the dish an extra bite. Again a top dish. Complex in flavours. We lick our plate with the delicious bread that is also on the table.

As wine we drink a Circa St. Joseph AC Blanc of the Chave Selection from the Rhone area. A very nice match with this complex dish.

We let the chef surprise us for the next dish. We get cod sous-vide cooked with mussels, dill, onion, celery and walnut. A large piece of cod that is firm. On the cod dill, onion and mussels. In addition, an onion and celery gravy is served and a walnut cream on top. This again produced a very nice picture. White fish, brown “gravy” and cream colored cream. The taste experience is again perfect. The fish with the sauces go so well together. What a top chef who made this.

As wine we get a Chardonnay from Domaine Leflaive from Bourgogne from 2018. This wine is a perfect match with the rich sauces and the cod.

Het hoofdgerecht is eendenborst met truffel. Eend is perfect medium roze gebakken. Het vetrandje is zeer keurig ingekerfd, alle blokjes zijn even groot. Dit heb ik nog nooit ergens gezien. Zelfs hier is aandacht aan besteed. Op het bord ligt ook een bonbon van eendenvlees, daarbovenop ligt verse truffel. De saus die erbij geschonken wordt is gemaakt van hazelnoot. Door de saus zit eendenlever die een extra rijke smaak geeft aan de saus. 

The dish is perfect again.

Als wijn krijgen we een Sangiovese 2016 Brunello di Montalcino DOGC van Il Poggione uit Toscane. Een zeer volle wijn. Het gebied waar deze wijn vandaan komt is Montalcino en is een klein gebied. De wijn is gemaakt van de Brunello druif en is een kloon van de Sangiovesedruif. 

Finally, we take a dessert of quince with sea buckthorn and mascarpone. A small pastry of mascarpone cream with quince is served in a sauce of basil and quince. The ‘cake’ is sprinkled with basil and on top is sea buckthorn jelly. Very nice color (orange). A good fresh dish that is a very nice end to a beautiful evening.

Wij drinken hierbij een Chenin Blanc uit 2016 van Domaine Huet uit de Loire. Zoete dessertwijn die zeer goed bij de uitgesproken smaak van basilicum past, maar ook goed bij de vlakkere smaak van mascarpone. 

Finally, with coffee we get a tartelette with beetroot and meringue. A very tasty friandise.

Het grootste deel van de bediening hier is erg goed op elkaar ingespeeld. Het team draait als een trein. Wij hebben de indruk dat de gastheer nieuw is daar hij nog niet volledig meedraait in het team. Als iemand onze tafel had schoongemaakt, kwam hij om de tafel opnieuw schoon te maken. Dit vind ik niet erg. Wat ik zelf minder vind is dat deze heer als hij de wijn inschenkt geen aandacht voor de gasten heeft. Hij toont de fles niet en is het restaurant in aan het kijken. De dames die hier werken hebben meer aandacht voor de gasten. 

Hostess Jennifer knows her trade and makes sure that the guests have a good time.

What a very beautiful and special restaurant. Certainly because of the stories that this was the convent of the girls’ school, what the thoughts are about the carvings in the wall and how the interior came about. Jennifer talks about this with passion. It is already a pleasure to walk down the hall to this restaurant. You pass a large “painting” of roses. The lobby of the hotel is very beautiful. We recommend having a drink in the bar, by the fireplace, before or after dinner.

Overall

This is definitely a two star restaurant. We are glad we could eat here. We decided at the last minute to go to Sankt Moritz so we couldn’t book far in advance. Luckily we had the last table. The restaurant is closed during the summer, otherwise we would have been here last year. I am also happy that we can taste both dishes from Patrick and Rolf. They are both in no way inferior to each other and are both two-star chefs.