Gourmet meals and a 007 museum make for an unlikely pilgrimage site in the Alps. Read Mark Orwoll’s article and watch his video below.
James Bond is in the news again. In February, Amazon MGM assumed creative control from Eon Productions, marking the first such change in 60 years. In March, the studio brought on two veteran producers, and in June hired director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Bladerunner 2049, Dune) to helm the next Bond film.
A significant hole to fill, of course, is an actor to play the martini-sipping secret agent. Daniel Craig, who performed the superspy role in five movies, retired after shooting the latest in the saga, No Time To Die, in 2021.
The smart money says the next Bond will be, as expected, British, young enough to play Bond for the next 15 years, and a man. And possibly a person of color.
In the meantime, Bond fans can hold onto the past. And there’s no better place to do so—surprisingly—than a far corner of Austria, deep in an out-of-the-way pocket of the Alps, in the scenic town of Sölden.
The Specter of Spectre
Sölden and the surrounding Ötztal valley lie some 50 miles south of Innsbruck in Austria’s southwestern Alps, not far from the Italian border. The Bond cast and crew came here in 2015 to film Spectre, starring Daniel Craig and directed by Sam Mendes.
The production team was drawn by the spectacular scenery of the valley and its surrounding peaks. The settings ranged from snow-clad Alps to narrow, winding canyons, from church-steepled villages to modernistic architecture at 10,000 feet high. As it turned out, the Ötztal was ideal to film nerve-wracking chases, a staple of the Bond films.
And so I found myself in gemütlichkeit Austria to see for myself. All about me, as I rode the ski gondola to its thin-air terminus, were sights emblematic of the Alps. Imposing mountains rose precipitously on either side of the long flat valley floor. Photo-worthy villages were each centered on the tall spires of the local churches (inevitably Roman Catholic, Austria’s dominant religion). Flower-filled balconies brightened the façades of chalets. Two-lane roads passed emerald meadows full of belled cows and made S-turns up narrow mountain passes. You could hardly find a place more camera-ready.
Bond and Austria: A Marriage Made in Himmel
I had watched Spectre before traveling to the Ötztal. I immediately recognized the gondola’s mid-mountain station, where Bond’s colleague, the gadget-master Q (played by Ben Whishaw, the youngest actor ever to fill that role), was spotted by the bad guys and managed to dodge them at the last minute.
At the 10,000-foot summit of the mountain, Gaislachkogl, was a stunning, glass-encased, cubist-inspired restaurant called ice Q—or, as Bond fans would recognize, the stand-in for the Hoffler Klinik in Spectre, where Daniel Craig filmed several crucial (and deadly) scenes.
As if that weren’t enough of a Bond connection, adjacent to the restaurant is 007 Elements, “A James Bond Cinematic Installation.” The attraction, which celebrates the entire James Bond opus (with an emphasis on Spectre), opened in 2018 with a rotating exhibition of props, costumes, and film compilations emphasizing everything from Bond’s archenemies to the franchise’s exotic film sites around the world, including the mountaintop on which I stood.
Descending into the Mountain
As you might expect from any self-respecting building in a Bond film, 007 Elements is buried some 25 feet deep into the mountain peak. Guests are advised to wear a warm jacket: Purposely, there is no heat in the structure to avoid damaging the permafrost under which the installation operates.
I entered the building into the Barrel of the Gun, a long, dark, narrow space, at the back of which was a wall-size screen showing a filmed montage of title sequences backed by stirring Bond theme music played as loudly as music in any disco.
A docent entered the room and directed the guests onto a broad outdoor viewing platform, the Plaza, where the full magnificence of the surrounding mountains was breathtaking. (The thin air at that elevation may have been a contributing factor to the general breathlessness.)
Peeling Back the Layers of the Bond Films
Back inside, director Sam Mendes explained, on film, the installation’s genesis and the history of the James Bond movie franchise, from Dr. No to Spectre. (Only one other Bond film has been produced since Spectre: 2021’s No Time to Die).
Following Mendes’s intro, we walked into another space, the Lair, a tribute to the dozens of frightening henchmen, tough guys, and flat-out rotters for which the films are famous. As images of Oddjob, Jaws, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld swirled around us in a cornucopia of onscreen villainy, my guide turned to me and whispered with undisguised glee, “This is my favorite gallery!”
Other displays focus on special effects, props, exotic filming locales, weapons, and the Austrian chase scene in Spectre. My favorite room was Action Hall, dominated by the front half of a plane flown by Bond that seemingly has been frozen in time in the midst of exploding.
ice Q, a Most Unusual Restaurant
After having spent the morning traveling to the village of Sölden, riding up the (long, long) gondola, and touring 007 Elements, I was starving.
Thankfully, one of the most unusual restaurants I’ve ever seen was only steps away from the Bond exhibit: ice Q. This is no top-of-the-mountain, brats-and-beer, ski-bum eatery. The gourmet restaurant has two toques from Gault-Millau.
The glass-encased landmark is cantilevered, almost frighteningly so, at the edge of the mountain. ice Q looks either like a Cubist painting or a gigantic glass cash register with the cash drawer accidentally left open, depending on your point of view. No matter your architectural leanings, though, you won’t soon forget it.
A Twist on Old-School Austrian Cooking
ice Q’s menu is a modern take on traditional Alpine cuisine, with an emphasis on locally sourced ingredients. “Our fish comes from nearby Längenfeld,” restaurant manager Tobias Heim told me. “We get all our other ingredients either regionally or at least from Austria. We even blend our own wine!”
If anything could outshine the food, it was the dining room’s clean, almost Scandinavian light-oak furnishings and decorative touches. But nothing could beat the Alpine views from the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto the mountainous horizon and deep into the gorges on all sides. Views here are best in summer, Heim said; clouds often obscure the vistas in the colder months.
The Perfect Way to End a Bond Day
I had been staying at an Ötztal valley resort called the Aqua Dome, a vast spa-, sauna-, and pool-intensive phenomenon that sits at one of the widest and most eye-pleasing sections of the valley. It occurred to me that the name of my resort would make an excellent title for the next Bond film: Aqua Dome.
I headed straight for the rounded, artfully lighted lobby bar, where my favorite mixologist had just come on duty.
“Sir?” she asked, polishing a rocks glass as I sat. I considered my options for about, oh, three seconds. “Vodka martini,” I replied. “Shaken, not stirred.”
When I was done savoring that beautiful drink, I dabbed my mouth with a napkin and crossed the lobby to the front desk, where I planned to book a massage at the spa. The desk clerk smiled.
“Yes, sir, of course,” he said. “A massage. And your name?”
“Orwoll,” I replied in my best shaken-martini voice. “Mark Orwoll.”
A combination round-trip gondola ticket and adult pass to 007 Elements costs approximately U.S. $73 (62 euros) from the Bergbahnen Sölden. A three-course a la carte lunch at ice Q costs $170 for two people, before wine or cocktails. Reservations are recommended at least two weeks in advance.
Author Bio:
Highbrow Magazine contributing writer Mark Orwoll is a veteran journalist and the former International Editor of Travel + Leisure. His most recent story for Highbrow Magazine took him to the island of Dominica in search of bush rum.
For Highbrow Magazine
Photo Credits: Mark Orwoll, Otzal Tourism