We enjoyed our week in the Hochfilzer as had a nice room, it was immaculately clean, there is a wonderful well-used pool complex and it is very central to the village. They have a lot of special evenings, barbeque, farmer’s buffet and gala dinner. There is also live music in the bar on several evenings. All in all it is a nice place tne the staff work very hard to keep it all together. We travelled with Inghams and they have an arrangement that guets can help themselves to a sandwich buffet selection to make up their own lunches. This is in a separate room from the breakfast buffet and it includes, cheese, ham, tomatoes, rolls fruit and drinks. Very worth while as it saves a fortune on lunches. Our only gripe is the meals, which we felt were not up to the standard of a 4 star hotel. It does not help that we do not eat meat and in Austria that is always going to be a problems, but one of the evening meals consisted of what must have been a frozen stuffed pancake – full of flavourless vegetables, it was truly foul. I would not eat stuff like that at home and do not like to spend hard-earned cash on a holiday where it is served. A lot of the vegetables were tinned and in August is inexcusable. I do not like to be a moaner, as it is obviously a labour of love for Ingrid and her team, but she must look at the food she is serving if she is to keep up with other hotels of this star rating. I also did not like the horrible orange juice that was on offer at breakfast, surely they can do better than that. I would not let this put you off, as the meat eaters got a great deal more than we had, their plates were overflowing with meat, sausages, chops etc whilst we had a small plate of cheesey pasta! Not a good deal for our money. Open wine at the table was about 12 euros for a half litre jug and the mineral water added another 3.50 euros each evening. I do not know what the bar prices were like as we did not drink after supper in the hotel. There is a cake buffet in the afternoon, but this was, on the whole dry and uninteresting, and the coffee which was on offer was surely instant, there was no option for tea. Ellamu is a gorgeous village, just a nice size and with lots going on, the cable cars in the area are fantastic and it is good value to buy a card for a week as it is always good to ride up and have a walk up there. All in all we liked it very much, just would have been nice to have had better food. Ingrid the owner checks on reviews and told me afterwards that had we told her that we were not satisfied with the vegetarian option she could have remedied it, but it was too late then.
