After a family packed trip to Austria, Stewart and I took 3 days to relax. After a lot of back and forth on the planning and where to go we decided to head to the Tyrol Mountains (border of Austria and Italy) for some hiking and good food. Being back in Europe is hard for me as it reminds me of how much I miss living there and how we could easily travel to the most beautiful spots, including undiscovered gems (at least to us) like Tyrol.

My friend and travel agent extraordinaire Mette ([email protected]) suggested Castel Frasgburg as a lovely spot with good food (making Sam happy) and awesome outdoors (making Stewart happy). Not that I don’t love the outdoors, I do, but it has to come with good food. Joshua Tree for example (where we were recently) has gorgeous but food, hmmmm not so much…..

Ok, back to the best food in Tyrol. On our second day of hiking, still tired from a 10 miles hike the previous day, we decided to take it easier. Oh well, ended up being 9 miles but it was an extraordinarily beautiful hike and per our concierge’s suggestion we stopped for lunch at Gompm Alm which she said was the best food in the mountains. Despite high expectations, wow, it blew us away. She nailed it!!!

The restaurant sits in the middle of gorgeous mountains and after a steep downhill we oggled everyone’s plates around us, salivating and struggling to decide what to eat.

We settled on the pasta with truffles special and the chanterelle pasta for a mushroom pasta taste-off coupled with salad.

The vino was a suggestion by our total hottie waiter who was sporting the appropriate lederhosen with a tucked-in plaid shirt.

This was the absolutely best meal. The two pastas were amazing and the salad was fresh and tasted like it had come straight from the backyard (probably did). We once again trusted Helli’s suggestion and ordered the dumpling special, filled with a hazelnut and chocolate filling (better Nutella), topped with strawberries and with a side of fresh mint ice cream made in-house. Oh wow, even Stewart who claims he doesn’t love dessert was tempted to order a second one as it was insanely good. The dumpling was light, the chocolate filling oozed from the dumplings and the mint ice cream was fresh and light. Crazy good.

The steep 30 minute uphill back to the funicular was challenging but very worth it.  Totally LOVE Gompm Alm! The steak special  also looked gorgeous and we wished we could just go back for it, right now! Ah if we still lived in Europe……

http://www.gompmalm.it/anfahrt-2/