Few things are as evocative as waking up in the mountains. Coffee mingling with the cool morning air, the sound of a knife going through a slice of bread, the taste of jam or fresh cheese.
Few things are as evocative as waking up in the mountains.
Coffee mingling with the cool morning air, the sound of a knife going through a slice of bread, the taste of jam or fresh cheese. Helping our guests at Hotel Galli (re)discover these sensations is something I care about deeply, which is why breakfast here includes a whole section devoted to the Tast Project.
What the Tast project is: Tradizione Alpina Senza Tempo - Timeless Alpine Tradition
Tast – Livigno Native Food grew out of a collaboration between ACPL (Livigno's Association of Chefs and Pastry Chefs), ATC and APT, around an idea that is at once simple and ambitious: to bring the native flavours of our valley back to the table. Twenty-one products, carefully selected, made with 100% Italian ingredients — and some of them, such as Brasc'carola, made exclusively from ingredients sourced in Livigno itself.
These are the flavours of memory. The ones our grandparents keep close to their hearts, sometimes with a touch of melancholy. That is exactly what Native Food sets out to tell: food in its original form, essential, the food of home and family.
Ingredients that carry a different meaning, and a different taste, for each one of us.
Why the Tast breakfast belongs at Hotel Galli
For me, cooking is a question of roots.
Every dish I bring to the table at Il Cenacolo, the restaurant inside Hotel Galli, comes out of an ongoing conversation with this land. It would have made no sense to leave Livigno's traditions outside the door at the very first moment of the day.
The Tast breakfast is my statement of intent, served with coffee.
Every morning, as I walk into the dining room, the first aroma to catch my attention is the Pan da cól. To me this is no ordinary bread: it is childhood.
Cól, in our dialect, means colostrum, and it is the ingredient that makes this bread what it is. Colostrum is the first milk a cow produces in the days immediately after calving: a thick, yellowish liquid, richer in protein and easier to digest than ordinary milk.
Because it is available only during those few days, it was not an ingredient you could simply reach for whenever you wanted when I was a boy. And when it did arrive, it was a celebration at home.
Even now, when I slice that bread, the smell takes me straight back. And just as I did as a child, I pause for a moment to weigh up whether it is better with jam or with Brasc'carola, before concluding, as always, that it is well worth having two slices.
Today, at the Galli, we look after that memory alongside many others, with all the care the present demands.
The colostrum we use for our Pan da cól is frozen and stored according to the strictest food safety standards, ready to use, which is how we are able to offer it to our guests all year round.
Serving the Tast breakfast to our guests is not simply about putting a local product on the table.
It is about sharing a part of myself.
What you will find at our Livigno corner
Alongside the classic continental buffet, Hotel Galli always has a dedicated Livigno Breakfast Corner stocked with Tast products. Here I will let the names speak for themselves, because in dialect they already read like a small poem.
Bisc'cöt da Livign (traditional biscuits), Tórta da Rosina and Tórta da l'indoménia (two local cakes).
Bondiöla, Brasc'carola, Pancéta and Salam da Báita — the cured meats of the valley.
Then, alongside the Pan da cól, come Pan da séal, Breciadégl and Pan da carcént: our breads.
And the cheeses, alpine and goat's cheeses, Formaggio Livigno, Poina ricotta, Scimudin, Latte Stagioni, and in summer alpine pasture butter.
Every one of them is an ingredient, a recipe or a preparation handed down and adapted over decades, and all of them now live on in Leina da Saor ("an avalanche of flavours"), the recipe book ACPL has dedicated to the cooking of our valley, a copy of which you are welcome to leaf through here at the Galli.
My own part in it is simply the most important thing a chef can do with a tradition this deeply rooted: keep it alive, and share it as widely as possible.
A gesture of gratitude
If I had to sum up why all of this matters, I would put it like this: offering these flavours in their genuine form is a gesture of gratitude. Towards the nature that made them possible, and towards the people who have preserved these recipes with passion and respect.
The Tast breakfast , the Livigno Breakfast at Hotel Galli, is waiting for you, for the best and most authentic good morning there is.
Luca Galli
Offerte
