While most ski areas would love to have one iconic landmark, Las Leñas is full of them:
Cerro Leñas; Cerro Torrecillas; El Collar; Manhattan; Entre Ríos, etc., etc. These are such colossal monuments, it’s amazing to us that they aren’t yet household names to skiers and boarders around the world.
It’s as if Niagra Falls was next to Mount Rushmore, and across the street from the Eiffel Tower, and down the road from the Great Wall of China.
But those who know Las Leñas know that there is yet another icon: the Innsbruck.
The Innsbruck sits right at the base of the ski area, serves up good food and café doble, and BLISTER reviewer Jason Hutchins had his life changed on our recent trip when he was introduced to the Innsbruck’s medialunas.
Plus, from inside the restaurant or out on the Innsbruck’s deck, the views are…not bad.
But there is more to the Innsbruck than its staggering views, friendly staff, and fantastic medialunas: there is torta.
If you’ve been following our review trips to Las Leñas over the past two years, you probably already know of my obsession with the torta chocolate at the Innsbruck.
To be clear, I’m not a big dessert guy; I rarely crave and I never buy, order, or bake chocolate cake. The last chocolate cake I ate was probably exactly a year ago, at the Innsbruck.
But that torta. I don’t know if Federico, the owner of the Innsbruck, sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the greatest cake in the world, but I’d believe it.
So we eat a lot of chocolate cake down here, and we talk about it even more.
But this got us wondering on the chairlift one day: what about the other torta at the Innsbruck? What if they are all this good? (Which, if they were, I would regard it as clear evidence that Federico had cut a Faustian bargain.) After all, other people—posiblemente personas locos—have claimed some of the other tortas as their favorites….
We needed to know. And there was only one way to find out: a Torta Test.
We took a poll for a few days to find out which were the clear contenders for the title of the Best Torta at the Innsbruck—which is basically to say: The Best Cake In The World.
We settled on our top 5, picked out our table, ordered a round of café doble, and got ready to get serious. About torta.
As you’ll see below, we have also weighed in on who is most likely to enjoy each of these particular tortas, and have addressed what I take to be one of the most important questions when it comes to dessert: is this something that you will be willing to share, or should you insist upfront that everyone gets his or her own, and keeps his hands off yours?
Warning: This is an X-TREME test, and we are professional reviewers. If you attempt to eat this much torta at one sitting, there is a good chance that you will develop full-blown diabetes on the spot. Please consult first with your physician. Hopefully, he or she will tell you you’re an idiot and talk you out of doing this.
Torta #1: manzana crujiente
This apple crisp is subtle. The apple filling itself wasn’t particularly sweet, the sugar and cinnamon crisp topping provided all of the sweetness.
Personally, I thought it was excellent, and I liked that it wasn’t super sugary or syrupy.
Reviewers Jason Hutchins and Ryan Caspar, however, wanted to dial up the dessert-i-ness of it all, and wished it was served with ice cream.
In fact, Jason then showed some swagger and claimed that his own apple crisp is better.
I can vouch for Jason’s homemade pizza, and also his pancakes (Jason loves pancakes more than skiing, Christmas morning, or the idea of world peace), but I’ve never had his apple crisp. But suffice it to say, the apple torta wasn’t going to win Best of the Innsbruck among these particular reviewers.
Who Should Get It: People who don’t like super sweet desserts, or people who (unlike Jason and Ryan) can appreciate subtlety.
Should You Share? We could go either way with our advice on this one. It’s not overwhelming, so you could easily finish a piece by yourself. But the subtlety means that it doesn’t hit you like heroin, where you’d rather stab someone than give any away.
Considering I have developed the BIGGEST sweet tooth in Nepal (every meal consists of rice, salty lentils and spicy vegetables), I would absolutely have sold my soul to have been at this testing. After looking at these pictures, I might go cry, then buy some questionable snickers that contains egg (?).
Snickers WITH EGG??? That sounds delightful. I would scramble them.