South-Tyrolean chef Tina Marcelli—Green-Starred at Artifex and named “Köchin des Jahres 2025” by Gault & Millau—has left Val di Fleres to helm Johanns, the fine-dining counter at the new Amonti Chalets in the Ahrntal. Her cooking weaves wild herbs, high-altitude fermentations and zero-waste rigor.
Born in 1986 in Luttago, Valle Aurina, Marcelli grew up between the family garden and mountain dairies, learning to milk cows and age Graukäse. After culinary school she refined gentle cooking and alpine preserves at Alpin Royal, Oberforsthof and Johanns (Freinberg, Austria). In 2021 the Feuerstein Resort entrusted her with Artifex, a four-table room at 1 250 m. There she led an almost all-female brigade and built ten-course menus that changed with snowfall, blossom and the harvest from the biodynamic garden “La Serra.”
Gault & Millau’s 2025 guide awarded her 4 Toques and the title Chef of the Year, praising a style that is “creative, sensual and deeply rooted.” Michelin followed by granting Artifex a Green Star 2025 for geothermal energy, closed-loop composting and sourcing from farms above 1 500 m. Signature dishes—Silence of the Forest (venison tartare, young pine cones, crispy lichen) and Milk & Hay (soured-milk gel, smoked hay, apple pollen)—echo the surrounding peaks.
In February 2025 Marcelli announced her return to her home valley. From May she leads Johanns, the gastronomic centerpiece of Amonti Chalets in Molini di Tures: a 14-seat counter facing the forest, serving tasting routes themed “altitude, fire, wind” with Pusteria rye, hay-aged venison and spruce-tip kombucha fermented in meltwater.
She calls her approach “heroic cuisine”—working with producers living above 1 500 m, turning waste into mountain-potato miso and minimising energy through geothermal and solar. Marcelli still runs the GenussMomente school in Luttago, teaches fermentation and sourdough, and hosts the podcast So isst Euregio to champion Slow-Food Graukäse. Her summer series “Dinners in the Forest” (launched 2023) stages circular menus in clearings lit by solar lanterns.
