The Capra, Saas-Fee Launches Culinary History Retreat

The Capra, five-star boutique wellness hotel in the car-free alpine village of Saas-Fee, Switzerland, is launching a unique gourmet retreat that will explore centuries of Swiss cuisine. Launched in partnership with the renowned food historian Professor Paul Freedman of Yale University, the three-night programme will include a series of themed dinners featuring historic dishes, vineyard visits, back-in-time food tours and intimate fireside conversations, all set against a landscape of a dozen-plus 4,000-metre-high peaks.

Located in the car-free alpine village of Saas-Fee, The Capra is a five-star boutique hotel combining wellness, sustainability, and authentic Swiss hospitality. Built in chalet style, the retreat offers a carefully curated alpine experience defined by refined design, personal service, and panoramic mountain views. The Capra has been awarded two Michelin Keys for the second consecutive time, recognising its successful balance of luxury and authenticity. The hotel was also named among Switzerland’s Top 5 wellness hotels in 2025. Open year-round, The Capra is a distinctive destination for discerning travellers seeking warmth, tranquillity, and understated excellence.

The Capra is the perfect setting for a retreat that celebrates traditional dishes and cooking techniques. Saas-Fee’s annual Nostalgic Culinary Mile festival celebrates ‘lost’ Swiss dishes from yesteryear, while The Capra’s menus emphasise natural, wholesome produce over modern-day ultra-processed foods and artificial ingredients.

The retreat is being pioneered by Phaedra Letrou, Partnerships and Experiences Director at The Capra and a member of the second generation of the hotel’s owning family. A graduate of Yale University, where she studied Cognitive Science, Letrou brings together insights from neuroscience, culture and wellbeing to shape The Capra’s retreats and guest experiences. One of the world’s foremost authorities on food and culture, her collaborator Professor Paul Freedman is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale. He is the editor of the lauded Food: The History of Taste and the author of several acclaimed works including American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way, and Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. His work explores how what we eat reveals who we are and how our societies have evolved. At The Capra, he will bring that lens to the Alps, guiding guests through centuries of mountain food culture.

“Food is one of the most powerful ways we connect with a place and its history. Working with Professor Freedman, we wanted to create something that goes beyond a typical dining experience. Each meal travels through time and tells a chapter of the Alps' story. At The Capra, we believe wellness is about curiosity, connection and slowing down enough to really engage with where you are. This retreat brings all of that together, and we think guests will leave understanding this landscape in a completely different way.” says Phaedra Letrou.

The programme opens with the first of three themed dinners, Romanticism and the Discovery of the Alps, which explores a post-1700s shift in the perception of mountains from aggressive obstacles to objects of beauty and introduces the food and flavours that accompanied the earliest leisure travellers to the region. Dishes might include the unappetisingly named but delicious cholera, a hearty pie of potato, leek, apple and cheese.

The second day brings a visit to nearby Valais vineyards, before a fireside conversation with Professor Freedman and the evening’s second dinner, The Grand Hotel Era, charting the extraordinary Swiss dining culture of the Belle Époque. Back then, new railway lines allowed high society easy access to mountainside restaurants serving potage a la reine (a soup of chicken and almonds) and desserts of poached peach with strawberry mousse.

On the concluding day of the retreat, guests can join a guided herbal walk, gathering wild mountain herbs used in the hotel’s kitchen and spa. The retreat closes with a Modern Alpine Cuisine dinner, revealing how Switzerland’s past has influenced present-day tastes to bring the story full circle. Throughout, guests will have time to enjoy The Capra’s 700-square-metre Peak Health Spa, the mountain trails on the hotel’s doorstep, and the unhurried pace of a village where no cars are allowed.

Professor Freedman says, "What has always fascinated me is how food reveals the history of a place in ways that nothing else quite can. A meal carries the story of who grew and raised the ingredients, who cooked it, and what was happening in the world at the time. The Alps have such a distinct culinary inheritance, and I'm looking forward to bringing these stories to life over the table at The Capra."

The inaugural annual retreat will be one of many newly introduced experiences and offerings at The Capra that celebrate wholesome dishes and dining habits that were commonplace before the proliferation of fast-food dining and ultra-processed foods. The hotel’s Brasserie 1809 restaurant and its bar are introducing a limited collection of seasonally changing Canton Classics, historic Swiss dishes and drinks that will be available to try year-round. Available to book privately, Meet the Makers tours will introduce guests to local small-scale farmers and producers who have followed the same purity-focused practices for generations. During September’s Nostalgic Culinary Mile celebrations, the hotel will host whimsical, heritage-infused special events including themed communal dinners and social evenings where cocktails from bygone eras are brought back to life.

Awarded two Michelin Keys for the second consecutive year and named among Switzerland’s top five wellness hotels in 2025, The Capra has quietly established itself as a different kind of alpine retreat, one where wellness is integrated into every moment and shaped by seasonal cooking, time spent outdoors and genuine human connection. This culinary history retreat is a natural extension of this philosophy, offering a chance to slow down, learn and share a table with people who care about where food comes from. For more information, visit www.capra.ch.