In recent years, regional products have increasingly become a trend in the gastronomy Hansjörg Ladurner, head chef at «Scalottas Terroir» in the Hotel Schweizerhof Lenzerheide, has been focussing on terroir cuisine for a long time and attaches great importance to regional, natural and seasonal products. Born in South Tyrol, he has been running the «Scalottas Terroir» restaurant together with sous-chef René Bissig since 2007. In 2022, the two were awarded the coveted green MICHELIN star for the first time. The MICHELIN Green Star was created in 2020 and is an award for restaurants that stand out for their sustainable commitment to gastronomy.
Text: Malin Müller
Bilder: provided
Hansjörg Ladurner, you have been running the «Scalottas Terroir» restaurant at the Hotel Schweizerhof Lenzerheide since 2007. Cooking has always been your great passion. When and where did you discover this passion?
I grew up in a family of hosts, my parents ran a restaurant. As a 10-year-old, the highlight was frying chips in the deep fryer, I «had to» test the crispiness of the potatoes again and again.
What is your philosophy behind «Scalottas Terroir»?
Our thoughts and actions endeavour to capture the entirety of culinary enjoyment. We want to offer our guests maximum enjoyment – show them what outstanding products are available in our region – and be a reliable partner to our producers. All this with the necessary respect for nature. We want to leave as small a footprint as possible.
What fascinates you about terroir cuisine and why do you live it so strongly?
The knowledge of our responsibility towards our earth, the soil that nourishes us, the animals, the people who work with us, the realisation of connections, the daily learning about and with the nature that directly surrounds us is fascinating. We don’t make terroir cuisine because it’s «IN», we live the idea that we only have one earth and that we take care of it. This attitude not only characterises our cuisine, we have also adapted our range of drinks to this conviction.

In 2019, you launched the BergAcker project. Here you plant your own potatoes, barley, field beans and much more according to old mountain farming traditions. How did this project come about?
When you look at the history of our food, you inevitably turn your attention to the history of the region. In the past, the area around Lenzerheide was predominantly characterised by agriculture. Lenzerheide was a mountain pasture area and the farmers in Vaz/Obervaz were self-sufficient. Each farmer kept goats or sheep, the cow served as a draught animal for the cart and plough and each farm had several fields, living in harmony with nature. Tourism brought money into the valley and people realised that selling building land was more lucrative than growing potatoes and grain for their own consumption. The founding of the cheese union in the 1960s encouraged farmers to switch to dairy farming. With the BergAcker, I wanted to show the farmers that their land grows far more than just grass for the cows, whose milk is barely sold at cost. The BergAcker is also a playground for like-minded farmers and chefs, a laboratory of nature and teaches us how products grow. This increases our appreciation of the ingredients and the work of our producers.
What advice would you give other restaurateurs with regard to regional cuisine?
Keep your eyes open – there are fantastic, unique products in your area and exciting people who produce them.
What is the biggest challenge when you work exclusively with regional products?
To start with, we are not dogmatic. We work with pepper and other spices that do not grow in our regions. Spices have been traded and used in the past, usually only by the wealthy upper classes. We are also not interested in man-made borders. The Val Venosta apricot is closer to me than the Valais apricot, on the one hand purely in terms of kilometres, but on the other hand the apricot gives me a connection to my homeland. However, the biggest challenge with our terroir cuisine is certainly the availability of the products. Ordering from suppliers at 10.00 p.m. in the evening and then having it delivered the next day at 9.00 a.m. doesn’t work for us. In conclusion, we plan much longer in advance while creating the menu and are flexible if the weather doesn’t play ball, the harvest fails or the hunter has no hunting luck. Nature always has a substitute in store.


What’s your signature dish?
In a cuisine that emphasises seasonality and the region, it is difficult to offer a dish throughout the year.For me, the Swiss stone pine foam soup with an apple raviolo and cranberries is a dish that perfectly portrays our terroir cuisine. The high-stem apples from our owner Andreas Züllig’s garden with the scent of Swiss stone pine oil, which our district forester extracts from the wood residues, and the slightly bitter flavour of the cranberries, collected by our staff, immediately conjure up images of the Grisons mountains in our guests› minds.
How do you develop new dishes?
There are products of outstanding quality in the rich store of our nature. I always take one such product and «craft» a dish from it with two or three other ingredients. We preserve wild fruits, herbs, tree blossoms or cones throughout the year, usually without knowing in advance what we will make from them. We can then use these products to bring something special and unexpected to the plate to match the other ingredients.
What is the best compliment you have received from a guest?
There are many wonderful encounters with our guests. But one in particular has stayed in my memory. An elderly lady hugged me in the restaurant and tearfully told me that the pot au feu from the chicken soup reminded her of her grandmother. It doesn’t take much to make people happy. Love and respect – for nature, for the product and enjoyment of what you do.