(Portrait)Extremely exhausting. Unbelievable amounts of criticism. Enormous amounts of education. The words Norbert Niederkofler uses to describe the turning point in his life suggest an arduous battle. In 2008, the South Tyrolean chef began to turn his fine-dining concept upside down: international, almost anonymous ingredients were to be replaced by local ones from the mountains. By 2012, foie gras, scallops, Argentine beef, as well as citrus fruits and olive oil, were permanently banned from the five-star Hotel Rosa Alpina in the Dolomites. Instead, the restaurant St. Hubertus began featuring gray cheese, forgotten root vegetables, wild berries, and high-altitude game. The name of this radically regional concept, which can also be seen as a search for a new definition of luxury, is “Cook the Mountain.”

At first glance, it may seem like a chef voluntarily limiting his ingredient palette rather than taking advantage of the full bounty. However, this apparent limitation became an unexpected driver of creativity and research. When ingredients are restricted by their local origin, one must find substitutes and, at the same time, dive deeper into biodiversity.

For example, what could replace the familiar acidity of citrus fruits? Niederkofler’s team turned to fermentation, among other techniques. What fruits are available when exotic ones are off-limits? Lingonberries, sea buckthorn, rowan berries, cornelian cherries, and yellow plums, just to name a few, are now staple ingredients. And what exciting, unknown items are out there that fit the “Cook the Mountain” motto? This list turned out to be much longer than Niederkofler had imagined when he first developed the concept: trout cheeks, lichen, larch cones, lamb ribs, purple carrots, beef diaphragm, masterwort, and more—ingredients as rare in their own way as hand-dived scallops or Alba truffles.

One of the words Niederkofler uses most often when talking about his transformation is “convincing.” Long before he needed to convince his audience, he had to win over his team and suppliers to the new philosophy. In other words, Norbert Niederkofler first had to find new suppliers. Whereas a quick call to the gourmet supplier Rungis Express had previously secured everything he needed, the two-star chef now had to put on his boots and trudge through barns and fields. He had to convince lamb farmers to slaughter their animals younger and at a lower weight—they immediately countered with a “But …” Now, he buys entire animals from them. He also had to persuade vegetable farmers to grow special, unfamiliar varieties. Again, nothing but “buts.”

In the beginning, improvisation was Niederkofler’s constant companion. The large suppliers with their global networks delivered punctually and reliably. His new suppliers, on the other hand, couldn’t yet match that consistency. This was partly due to the “Cook the Mountain” concept itself: alpine nature is not consistent. And when one of the guiding principles is to avoid greenhouse-grown products and instead focus on wild ingredients like mushrooms and berries, it naturally limits the continuity of the supply chain. The shift was a bold and risky move. After all, Niederkofler had two Michelin stars to defend. How would the influential Michelin Guide respond to his new culinary approach? And how would the guests and journalists react? He had already gathered some clues through informal surveys of his guests over the years: “I asked my guests, ‘Why do you come here?’ One of the answers was regionality. People didn’t just want to climb and ski the mountains—they wanted to taste them.” This reinforced his decision, but the reactions—when the change came—were more diverse than expected. There was praise and enthusiasm but also confusion. “I want my foie gras.” (Niederkofler recalls that of forty reservations, foie gras was ordered at least thirty times.) Or, “Why are you doing this now?”

So, why, indeed? Ethical reasons and concerns about sustainability were part of it. Niederkofler is convinced that, in the long term, the global population can only be fed through a tight network of local producers. But there was also another driving force: “It seemed to me at the time like the only way to earn a third star. I didn’t want to be comparable anymore.” He was right: In 2016, at age fifty-five, he was awarded his third Michelin star: “I think I was the oldest newly crowned three-star chef in the world.” Three stars for a cuisine that entirely avoids so-called luxury products, follows principles like zero waste and was a novelty at the time—one that still fills Niederkofler with pride. Over time—“Cook the Mountain” has been practiced for over a decade by now—his team has developed remarkable expertise in sourcing ingredients from the nearby mountains. This requires meticulously maintained databases—“everyone who takes something from the inventory must log it”—and long-term planning. Calling a large supplier for more fermented larch cones or dried beard lichens isn’t an option. Ingredient procurement has become easier over time, Niederkofler says, “because more producers have come on board, and new producers now come to us instead of the other way around because the concept has a name today.” He recalls that at first, he thought, “Great, great, great, we have so much!” But those early winters were sobering—“Oh, what now?” Today, his team works with farmers to develop planting plans for the coming season, and they preserve, ferment, dry, and salt ingredients using rediscovered methods. This approach sometimes leads to surprising new products: for example, fermented plums turn into rich, umami-laden ketchup after months of aging.

In the mountains, where weather conditions are harsher, sticking to a strictly regional concept is even more challenging than in more temperate regions. “It’s all very complex,” says Niederkofler. “You have to work with different altitudes, different valleys. If you source everything from one altitude, you suddenly have so much produce that you can’t process it fast enough. So we need crops that ripen early and others that come later to extend the summer harvest into the fall. Or, if you rely on one valley and it gets hit by hail, you end up with nothing.” Biodiversity is also crucial: “You need different varieties of carrots just to stretch your supply—an early carrot, a summer carrot, a fall carrot, and one that can be stored in the cellar until March, when fresh vegetables come back.” His team is now much more confident in the logistics than they were at the start. They have a better sense of when to expect certain ingredients and how to preserve them. It would be misleading, however, to say that preservation relies solely on rural, romantic techniques—freezing is a key tool. For example, in winter, they harvest white currants from the freezer (and don’t forget to log them!). The internal databases also help with event planning—each event represents a sudden depletion of certain ingredients. “If we get a request in the summer for an event in November, we first have to check how much we have of certain items. How many jars of preserved chanterelles, how many cornelian cherries? Then we say, okay, we need three kilos of cornelian cherries for this event, and they’re logged and reserved.”

One thing that has always been important to Niederkofler, both for himself and his young kitchen team, is to travel and import ideas into his own kitchen, but realized by using local ingredients. For example, they’ve created a seasoning sauce from mountain lentils inspired by soy sauce, a barbecue sauce without ketchup or alcohol, taramasalata made from the roe of pike and char, katsuobushi-style dried fish flakes, but from local salmon trout instead of Japanese tuna. Or black nachos made from polenta and charcoal, topped with rabbit kidneys and wood sorrel, served as three-star mountain tapas. Speaking of Latin cuisine: Niederkofler enjoys exchanging ideas with top chefs from other mountainous regions, like Peruvian chef Virgilio Martínez Véliz, who was a guest at Niederkofler’s symposium series “CARE’s – The Ethical Chef Days.” This event, part of the consulting firm Mo-Food, which Niederkofler runs with Paolo Ferretti, has the vision of “taking care of our environment and nature, the region, and culture in all its forms.” Mo-Food is also behind his restaurant AlpiNN, the “Food Space & Restaurant” at Kronplatz.

In the first year of CARE’s, 2016, the event’s headquarters were still at Hotel Rosa Alpina, where everything had started. Now, the main venue is the Moessmer Atelier in Brunico, Niederkofler’s new playground. Following the closure of St. Hubertus for renovations in March 2023, Niederkofler decided to go his own way. The historic Moessmer textile factory supported him by building a restaurant for him in a listed villa, expanded with a glass pavilion, on the company’s premises. The three Michelin stars were once again awarded to Niederkofler and his team, led by chef Mauro Siega, at Atelier Moessmer. Another star was awarded to his young Milan restaurant Horto, where chef Alberto Toè works exclusively with ingredients sourced within a ninety-minute drive.

Since Niederkofler can’t be in four places at once, it’s even more important that he can rely on his teams. Elevating his team members has long been one of his main missions—he’s also implemented “Cook the Mountain” projects for soup kitchens in the slums of São Paulo and major hotels in the USA and Asia. What’s next? Niederkofler doesn’t seem the type to settle down any time soon, even as he works on his next project in the Dolomites, a mountain food research center and culinary academy. But he does know that there will come a day when his full-time fine-dining career will be behind him. “It would be arrogant to think that you can be on the top of your game for 20 years. Most don’t last more than ten. There’s too much competition; the industry is too fast-paced. But I’m sure that at some point, a successor will step in and carry things forward. I’ll take a step back and perhaps just stay involved in the research side of things.”