St Moritz eats late and in a small number of rooms. Almost everything that matters sits inside or beside two hotels, which makes the week simple to plan and the doors harder to walk through.
The centre of it
Badrutt’s Palace on Via Serlas is where the town’s evening starts, on a CHF 1,800 guide. Whether you stay there or not, a table inside it is the simplest way into a St Moritz night.
Where it goes
King’s Social House, in the Palace, takes the night on a CHF 2,500 guide — loud, late, and the room most people mean when they say they went out in St Moritz.
The difficult door
The Dracula Club in Kulm Park is a members’ club at a CHF 2,000 guide and does not work like a restaurant booking. Ask early; it is an introduction, and we are honest when it is not going to happen for a given night.
Planning the week
The figures are seasonal guides, confirmed in writing before anything is held. For the rest of the trip, see the season guide and the Saint-Moritz guide.
The rooms inside the Palace
Badrutt's Palace is not one restaurant but several, and the week usually uses more than one. Le Restaurant is the grand dining room and the most formal table in the Engadin — a jacket in the evening is still expected. Chesa Veglia, the Palace's 1658 farmhouse across the road, is the opposite: wood-panelled, informal by St Moritz standards, and the room where the town eats when it is not performing. King's Social House, Jason Atherton's room downstairs, takes the night on a CHF 2,500 guide. Staying at the Palace makes all three easy; not staying there makes the concierge relationship the way in.
Beyond Badrutt's
The Kulm, the oldest hotel in town, keeps the Kulm Country Club beside the Olympic ice rink and a dining room of its own; the Carlton brings Da Vittorio up from Italy for the winter, which is the serious Italian meal of the season; Suvretta House, out on the quiet side, is where the old money eats without being looked at. On the mountain, El Paradiso on Corviglia is the lunch everyone asks for — a sun terrace above the valley that is committed on any clear day before the first lift turns. The Dracula Club remains what it has always been: members and their guests, and an introduction rather than a booking.
Dress code, honestly
St Moritz dresses. Le Restaurant at the Palace expects a jacket in the evening and rewards a tie; the Dracula Club is black tie or dressy and means it; King's is smart elegant at the door. Mountain lunch is the one place ski clothes are correct, and even then Corviglia at one o'clock in February looks more like a fashion shoot than a ski hill. Pack accordingly; it is the resort where an under-dressed table is noticed.
Timing the week
The White Turf race Sundays in February and the Snow Polo World Cup in late January fill every room in this article, and the tables around them are placed in the autumn. Outside those weekends the same rooms are simply busy, and a fortnight's notice usually works. The figures above are seasonal guides, confirmed in writing before anything is held. For the rest of the trip — the house, Samedan, the week itself — see the season guide and the St Moritz concierge.