The Hato Restaurant is located in the heart of St. Moritz village, only a few minutes walk away from the well-known Badrutts Palace
In the heart of St Moritz, Hato is all about people watching, inside and out, DJ vibes, and some vibrant pan-Asian cuisine to match anything in Mayfair, as LUX discovers
Slip into a window table at Hato and you have a ringside seat of the high-rolling circus that is St Moritz in season. A slick, dark, club-bar of a restaurant, Hato is right in the heart of the village, slightly elevated from the street, so you can look out, chilling to the DJ tunes, and spot exactly who is in town with which of their lovers/dogs/families.
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The cuisine is Fine Asian and the menu references the Head Chef’s previous role at Sexy Fish in London, but that doesn’t really do justice to Hato: this is much more refined than Sexy Fish, both in concept and execution.
The restaurant with views on the lake of St. Moritz serves fine asian cuisine dishes that are displayed in a very extravagant style
Our Som Tam salad – not jam, coriander, green papaya, carrots, red onion and iceberg – was a dish surely never served before in St Moritz, and had a delicious vibrancy, matched well with our other sharing starter of steamed aubergine with chilli and coriander.
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Hato started quiet that evening but quite late, as our mains arrived, troupes of young St Moritzians waltzed in, evidently familiar with the place, laughing, jogging over to their regular tables, chatting in the multilingual Esperanto of English, Italian, French and German that is the trademark of the Engadine.
Established in 2015, Hato is known for it’s range of asian foods, from rock shrimp tempura to Hamachi, a new style of yuzu truffle
Next up was handmade dim sum, which we had chosen over tempura, which seems to be everywhere these days. The siu mai and har gau were sufficiently al dente and definite, but it was the spinach and mushroom that caused delectations, likely due to the clarity of the local ingredients.
A main of black cod was originally, and highly successfully, served with saikio miso, truffle yuzu and fennel but the real standout of the whole meal was the whole butterfly seabass, with Thai spices. Zingy, buttery, thought provoking.
Grilled miso chicken, sashimi, nigiri, maki, handmade dim sum with ponzu sauce, shiitake mushrooms, tuna takaky: one doesn’t lack choice at HATO
We’re not sure if people go to Hato for the food or the vibe – both are high up the scale – or to spot their ex walking with someone new down below, to which the only answer is another bottle of Dom Perignon.
