Phaedra Letrou ’19 and her family make Swiss luxury feel personal at The Capra

Phaedra Letrou ’19 spent more than a decade making family memories at The Capra hotel in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, which her parents opened in 2014. Now, with a patisserie diploma from  Le Cordon Bleu and a bachelor’s degree from Yale under her belt, Phaedra is back in the Swiss Alps, serving as the hotel’s director of partnerships and experiences, and helping out wherever help is needed. Read on to learn about Phaedra and her family’s experience making a five-star hotel somehow feel like home. (And find a generous, ASL-exclusive offer at capra.ch/asl!)

Mornings in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, are marked by strips of warm, orange sunlight splashed across the snowy upper reaches of the Mischabel massif, the mountain range that dominates Saas-Fee and its neighboring Alpine villages. 

Over an à la carte breakfast at The Capra hotel, guests gaze out of wood-framed windows and watch those warm morning rays broaden into bright yellow swathes on the mountains outside while sipping foamy cappuccinos and fresh fruit smoothies.

For a Capra hotel guest, the day might go on to include world-class skiing, snowboarding or a scenic hike. The nearby Fee Glacier renders the area “snow-sure” nearly year-round, making Saas-Fee a renowned ski destination even in the summertime. Guests are also welcome to spend restorative time in the hotel spa’s lemongrass-scented saunas, steam room and pools, or indulge in local mountain cuisine (think raclette, fondue and infinite variations on the torte). If the day can be stretched, it might include a little bit of everything.

For Phaedra Letrou ’19, whose parents opened The Capra in 2014 and remain its proud owners today, a typical day in Saas-Fee tends to include a little bit of everything Capra. Since May, when she graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science, Phaedra has served as The Capra’s Partnerships and Experiences Director, but in truth, she explains, “I help wherever I’m needed.” Phaedra adds, with a laugh, “When it’s your family’s business, there is no ‘day off.’” 

Phaedra focuses primarily on supporting the hotel’s sales and marketing efforts, which means frequent travel to US conferences where representatives from high-end hotels mingle with interested travel advisors—something she learned to do by shadowing her father at the same sorts of conferences, along with hotel sales webinars, throughout her college years. 

Since long before she began working there, Phaedra has been spending time at the hotel with her family. “It’s a wonderful place to visit. It’s beautiful, and we would spend Christmas there,” she says. Ever since her parents opened the hotel, Saas-Fee has been like a second home for Phaedra, her sister (Ariadne Letrou ’17) and their parents. “We built a lot of memories there as a family, so I’ve always loved going.”

The first time Phaedra got a taste for the “behind-the-scenes” of the hotel was during her second gap year between ASL and Yale. On the heels of a yearlong course at Le Cordon Bleu’s Madrid and London campuses, where Phaedra spent her first gap year, she took a seasonal job as a line cook at The Capra’s Brasserie 1809.

Phaedra always loved food and cooking—as early as her fifth birthday party, her father dressed up as a chef to help her celebrate—but it was the movie Julie and Julia, which she saw for the first time around age 11, that planted the seed that ultimately led her to Le Cordon Bleu.

“Culinary school was amazing. I learned so many skills that I carry with me today, which are useful not just in terms of cooking, but also in being detail-oriented, and the idea that you should take great care and pride in each little step of what you do,” Phaedra says.

“At the start, I was very skeptical of why we needed to be so precise in baking, but soon I realized it makes a huge difference in the bigger picture,” says Phaedra of her time at Le Cordon Bleu, adding, “I think this can apply a lot to the hotel: We take extreme efforts in the little details that guests might not notice consciously.” 

She refers to a Walt Disney quote: “‘People can feel perfection.’ At The Capra, we’re striving for that.”

Phaedra learned a great deal from her time as a Capra line cook, too. “There’s a lot that is very hard to replicate in a school setting,” she says. “You learn how to multitask; you learn ingredient management.”

Ingredients, Phaedra adds, are incredibly important at The Capra. Ninety percent of the hotel’s food products are sourced from within a two- to three-hour’s drive, and 85% of wines on offer come from the Valais region, which Saas-Fee calls home. 

The hotel’s deep commitment to sustainability is felt in its food and throughout the property, including in ways that aren’t quite visible: Phaedra explains that the hotel’s energy comes from clean sources, in part because Saas-Fee, which has been blissfully car-free for nearly 75 years, is among Switzerland’s most sustainable municipalities.

When the Letrous visited Saas-Fee sometime around 2012, it was love at first sight. They never intended to build a hotel there when they booked the trip, and neither of Phaedra’s parents has a background in hospitality, although, as Phaedra jokes, “We’re Greek; hospitality is in our blood.” (Phaedra’s father is Greek and Norwegian, and her mother is Greek. Phaedra speaks four languages, and is embarking on learning a fifth: German.)

“Most of Switzerland’s five-star hotels are very grand and decadent,” Phaedra says. “My parents wanted to build something cozier, which felt more like you were visiting family or friends. The whole place was designed to feel like a home, while keeping the caliber of a five-star property.”

In the three chalets that together comprise The Capra (while giving the impression of being one building, thanks to the hallways that connect them), natural wood grains and understated elegance reigns supreme. Muted tartans and plush accent pillows abound, and a delightful variety of small, melt-in-your-mouth cookies can be found everywhere. 

One such treat, a flaky, glossy, butter biscuit, is shaped like the iconic native Valais Blackneck goat, which serves as The Capra’s insignia and namesake alike (“Capra” is Latin for “goat”) and an ever-full bowl of them greets guests at reception when they arrive.

“Even though it’s a hotel, it never feels impersonal, because it’s so small and intimate,” Phaedra says. With only 38 rooms and suites, The Capra is the smaller of Saas-Fee’s two five-star hotels, and the only one to hold two Michelin Keys. 

“We get to know our guests. I think the main reason for that is our team,” Phaedra says. “It feels like the people who work at The Capra are genuinely kind and warm, and we take a lot of pride in making each guest’s stay feel special.”

When she started college in 2021, Phaedra didn’t necessarily envision herself working for the family business after graduation, though she always figured that food would be part of her future. 

Early on at Yale, she took a class on the history of food taught by Paul Freedman, a preeminent food historian, who became her mentor, and who is visiting The Capra in June 2026 to lead a culinary history event. After her first year of college, Phaedra spent the summer working at the Harwood Arms, a Michelin-starred gastropub in Fulham. Her next two summers were spent studying Italian in Tuscany and working at London’s famous Layla Bakery, respectively.

“I am super lucky that my parents never put any pressure on me to do something specific in terms of an intense internship,” Phaedra says. “They kept encouraging me to do what I wanted to explore.”

During the academic year, Phaedra joined Y Pop-Up, Yale’s undergraduate–run fine dining pop-up founded in 2013. In her second year, she served as its head chef. Each Yale college houses its own late-night deli, or “underground buttery,” and Phaedra and her team would reserve those areas and use them to serve elaborate, themed, one-night-only meals (often five courses, sometimes eight) to lucky groups of around 70 students at a time.

On the side, Phaedra founded Peckish, a food magazine that reviewed New Haven restaurants, published recipes, featured food-centered fiction, and more: anything “food” was on the table.

“I’ve always loved cooking for people,” Phaedra reflects, “and the hotel is kind of an extension of that on a bigger scale—you create connection and comfort for people.”

After a day spent in the mountains, returning to The Capra for a warm dinner at their Brasserie 1809 truly does feel like coming home. At breakfast, the food is elegant without feeling stuffy; hearty without being heavy; and clearly rooted in season and place.

The Brasserie feels comfortable and open, and there is a sense of joy and ease in the air as hotel guests, and other diners just there for an evening, enjoy long, leisurely meals over fine Valais wines.

“Our philosophy is based on movement; on spending time outside with nature,” Phaedra says. “So much research shows that spending time outside makes you happier, and that doing it every day has a lot of power.” When guests come to The Capra for wellness retreats operated by Peak Health, the hotel’s spa and wellness partner, they are asked to end their days with a 20- or 30-minute stroll to aid digestion. 

Stepping into the cool night air, and into what was, just a few hours ago, a bright-blue day in Saas-Fee, the stars are out in force. 

The Mischabel massif, so commanding during the daylight hours, would be totally invisible at night were it not for the mountains’ moonlit snow cover, which silhouettes the landscape until the sun rises to face them again at dawn the next day.

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ASL community members are being offered an exclusive voucher of 1,000 CHF toward a stay of six or more nights at The Capra through 20 December 2026! Please visit capra.ch/asl for more details.