Val di Fassa is starting an autumn food week, 20 to 26 September, with set menus at six restaurants.
It is called Fassa Fall, in love with Food, and it is a first edition. Six kitchens, a programme of producer encounters, and a closing party at Pera di Fassa on the Saturday.
Worth separating the two halves straight away. The interesting invitation, for anyone with a few days in the Dolomites, is to sit down at two or three of these tables. The Saturday festivities are a different kind of afternoon.
Who is cooking
Paolo Donei at Malga Panna and Martino Rossi at Fuciade are the two names most people will recognise. With them: Riccardo Schacher at Foresta, Ruben Cadrobbi at Zucoria, Alessandro Bellettato at Majon Miramonti and Gaetano Bonanno at Rifugio Valentini.
The line-up runs from Moena up towards Passo Sella. That spread is a planning fact before it is a culinary one, because the valley is thirty kilometres long and the road through it is the only one there is.
The six menus, and where the wine is included
The tourism board has published the programme and the menu booklet. When you compare the prices, the thing to look at first is not the number. It is the wine.
- Malga Panna, 110 euro. The most expensive of the six, and the glasses are extra.
- Rifugio Fuciade, 85 euro, with the pairing already inside the price.
- Zucoria, 85 euro. Same figure, same arrangement: the wine comes with it.
- Rifugio Valentini, 90 euro. Drinks on top.
- Majon Miramonti, 80 euro, wine separate.
- Foresta, 45 euro. The cheapest way into the week, and again you pay for what you drink.
Which reorders the list considerably. Fuciade and Zucoria at 85 with the pairing inside are doing something quite different from Valentini at 90 without it, and the gap between Malga Panna at 110 and Foresta at 45 is not the gap it looks like once glasses are added.
Six separate menus, then. Not one ticket covering six meals. You book with the restaurant, and you say the words Fassa Fall when you do, because a week-long festival does not mean every dining room is serving that menu at every lunch and every dinner. Ask for the specific service.
Malga Panna and Fuciade make the best pair
At Malga Panna the menu runs through trout, venison ravioli and roast duck, finishing on elderberries and strawberries. At Fuciade there is smoked trout and slow-cooked South Tyrolean Wagyu, then a mandarin dessert. Those are selected dishes rather than the full sequences.
If you only have two meals, take those two. One is Donei’s restaurant at Moena, reachable and civilised, ten minutes from the road. The other asks something of you.
Fuciade sits at nearly 2,000 metres in a former hay barn, about 45 minutes on foot from Passo San Pellegrino, looking across to the Pale di San Martino and Col Margherita. Martino Rossi runs the kitchen.
For lunch the walk is the point, and it turns the meal into a day. For dinner, ring ahead and settle exactly how you arrive and how you get back, particularly for anyone in the party who cannot do the path. The snowmobile transfers mentioned in the winter listings are not a September plan.
The other four
Zucoria is the second pairing-inclusive route, which quietly makes it the value pick of the six. Foresta builds its menu around pumpkin and lands at 45. Majon Miramonti and Rifugio Valentini complete the set.
Choose the second and third bookings by where you are sleeping and what you actually want to eat. Six tasting menus in six days is not a holiday, it is a job.
A long lunch, one quiet evening and an afternoon walking will beat another transfer every time. This valley is not built for a restaurant crawl and does not reward one.
Alongside the tables there is a wider programme of workshops and producer encounters. Those are scheduled separately and a restaurant booking does not enrol you in any of them. Check the listing for times and for which language the session runs in before you build a day around a demonstration.
The Saturday finale is a separate ticket
The closing food trail is at Fraine in Pera di Fassa, beside the Avisio, with tastings from noon to two. There is live music in Ladin and an optional guided walk in the afternoon.
The English booking page shows a starting price of 20 euro. Read what that entry-level figure includes: one chosen tasting, a drink, the concert and the walk. Not the whole trail. There is a fuller option on the same page, so pick the actual package rather than booking on the headline number.
Booking closes at 5pm the day before. Treat the restaurants and the Saturday as two entirely separate arrangements, with their own conditions and their own deadlines.
Where to sleep
Moena is the practical base. It puts Malga Panna on your doorstep and Passo San Pellegrino within reach, which covers the two meals most people will want. Further up towards Canazei you gain Passo Sella and lose Foresta.
Our Dolomites hotel edit is a wider starting point and not a claim that any of those properties sits next to these restaurants. Fix the valley base first, then the bookings.
The thing that ruins a week like this is a forty-minute mountain drive after a tasting menu. Fassa Fall works when the distance between the table and the bed is short.
Luxury.it perspective
A first edition is worth going to precisely because it is a first edition. Six kitchens, one valley, one week, and none of it yet smoothed into a machine.
The programme is honest about what it is: set menus at real restaurants at published prices, not a ticketed food fair. Forty-five euro at Foresta and 110 at Malga Panna in the same brochure is a range that lets a valley include itself rather than only its visitors.
Go for two meals, walk to one of them, and let the Saturday happen or not.
Related guides
Continue with the Dolomites hotel edit, the wider Restaurants desk and the latest arrivals in Luxury Openings.
For Dolomites hotels, mountain restaurant reservations and private transfers, contact Luxury.it Concierge.
