Tips on how to Plan a Meals-focused Journey to Slovenia

I had been in Slovenia just some hours when, strolling alongside a forest path exterior the northwestern city of Kranjska Gora, my companion, Dave, and I noticed two ladies huddled round a spruce tree, harvesting the mushy inexperienced ideas of the branches. I puzzled what they might do with them. By the point it occurred to me to ask, we had continued on our hike, and after we rotated, the ladies had been gone.

I may need forgotten concerning the spruce ideas had it not been for our dinner that night time. It was early night after we arrived at Milka, a glossy, fashionable guesthouse on the sting of Lake Jasna. Constructed within the Sixties, Milka is one in every of Slovenia’s many gostiščes, household eating places that speckle the nation, providing in a single day lodging to dinner friends. 

Seated on the deck, because the night gentle channeled by the Julian Alps to the west, I drank a cocktail infused with dandelion root and black-currant wooden and snacked on a buttery wafer topped with a compote of foraged barberries. After I requested Dino Katalenič, who was the overall supervisor on the time, to clarify a wild-asparagus canapé garnished with forget-me-not blossoms, he instructed me that each Tuesday, Milka’s youthful cooks exit into the forests and fields to assemble recent substances. Dino — he had launched himself as “Dino, quick for ‘Dinosaur’” — was slim and debonair. A tattoo of a tiny airplane and its contrail spiraled his proper wrist: a memento of his 16 years of journey earlier than he returned house to assist open Milka. When the sommelier introduced us a bottle of Keltis Žan Belo, a skin-contact white wine from jap Slovenia, the pairing was floral, surprising, and completely exact. 

In 2022, Milka earned its first Michelin star; the following yr, it earned a second. Like lots of the nation’s best-known eating places, it embodies a profound sense of kinship with the encompassing panorama. Over the 9 days that Dave and I traversed Slovenia looking for its modern meals tradition — on a self-guided mission designed by the travel-planning agency Scott Dunn — we discovered ourselves in a suggestions loop of earth and desk. The nettles I noticed on Slemenova Špica, a rocky promontory we scrambled up one morning, for instance, would reappear days later at Landerik, a classy institution within the capital, Ljubljana, their leaves topping a beef tartare. 

“For a small nation to tell apart itself, it has to inform a narrative,” Dino stated. The narrative starting to emerge is of a meals tradition outlined by foraging and small-scale farming — practices so primary to the common native that to see them spawn a tourism business is probably a shock. That is meals that takes work: “It’s ingrained in our tradition that it’s important to endure a bit bit,” he stated. 

When spruce ideas appeared in our second course, in a young nest of kohlrabi and caramelized cream, they tasted like a spring Christmas. I instructed Dino concerning the ladies we had seen, and he defined that Slovenians make a liqueur with the ideas — smrekov liker — and recommended we strive Milka’s model. Hours later, having forgotten his supply, we heard a knock on the door of our room. It was the sommelier, bearing a tray with two tiny glasses. 

The historical past of Slovenian delicacies is the historical past of a nation buffeted by nearly each European affect — Celts, Romans, Alpine Slavs, Bavarians, the Napoleonic Empire, Italy, the Soviet bloc (Slovenia was a part of the previous Yugoslavia) — whereas, by all of it, cultivating its personal language and traditions. However the world didn’t take discover of Slovenian delicacies till lately.

In 2002, the self-taught chef Ana Ros took over the restaurant Hiša Franko from the household of her then-partner. Making a menu from the merchandise of the farms, rivers, and forests of the Soča Valley the place she lives, Ros turned native meals into a world attraction. In 2016, she was featured on the Netflix collection Chef’s Desk; 4 years later, when Michelin revealed its first Slovenian information, Hiša Franko was awarded two stars, and in 2023, it earned a 3rd. 

Our reservations on the restaurant weren’t till the tip of our journey, and but we had been already sensing Ros’s affect. One afternoon in Ljubljana, we dropped by her pop-up bistro in a quiet alley within the metropolis heart, the place her daughter, Eva Klara, served us a platter of Hiša Franko’s well-known roast beef. Earlier, at Open Kitchen, a meals market throughout the river, we had handed a tent promoting pastries from Pekarna Ana, Ros’s bakery. Each sunny Friday from March by October, some 50 of the perfect eating places in Slovenia collect in Pogačarjev Sq. for the market, the place they provide their most distinctive dishes. Since Open Kitchen started 11 years in the past, it has turn into an incubator of kinds. A lot of the eating places in Slovenia with Michelin stars have had a tent there, together with Ros’s. 

“Ana Ros was over there,” the market’s director Lior Kochavy stated, pointing, “and one Friday I get a cellphone name, ‘Sorry, we are able to’t make it. There’s an American TV crew right here. One thing Desk.’ ” He laughed. The truth that Slovenian cooks have needed to give up the market due to their very own success thrills him.

We had organized upfront to satisfy Kochavy on the Open Kitchen, however as quickly as I discovered him, he vanished amid throngs of patrons. “I’ll deliver you one thing,” he known as. He reappeared and disappeared a number of extra occasions within the subsequent 20 minutes, delivering a basket of roast potatoes and pork with crispy rinds from Tremendous Hrust, then veal liver, asparagus, and porcini from Gostilna Mihovec, and eventually three completely different desserts, amongst them chocolate-dipped ice cream balls from Bon Bon Atelje. 

Kochavy isn’t a chef, however when he moved to Ljubljana from Tel Aviv 15 years in the past, he got here to know Slovenia “by the abdomen.” Sooner or later, he stopped at a household restaurant north of Ljubljana and ordered grilled mushrooms. They had been so good he returned, however the dish wasn’t out there anymore. “They checked out me like I used to be loopy. ‘What’s the matter with you, man? Mushroom is not in season.’ At any time when I spoke of this with locals, it was like, ‘That is how we cook dinner right here. That is regular.’ However this isn’t regular for a lot of the world.” 

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One other distinguished Open Kitchen alumnus is Luka Košir, who labored in eating places in Ljubljana earlier than returning to the land he grew up on, a 30-minute drive west, and reworking his household’s conventional Slovenian restaurant right into a Michelin-starred institution, Grič. The morning after assembly Kochavy, that’s the place we headed, on a slim street that wound upward by forests and meadows, every one a constellation of wildflowers. It had been arduous to get up — for Dave particularly, whose birthday I had naïvely introduced to our Ljubljana information, Jure Gašperšič, the night time earlier than. Gašperšič had taken us to TaBar, his favourite hangout, a hip tapas restaurant. Had a thunderstorm not struck the second we tried to go away, we may need escaped the extra wine — and the hangover. 

At Grič, Chef Košir and his sommelier, Nejc Farčnik, took pity on us after we arrived, providing espresso in lieu of glowing wine. The eating room was beautiful, with white vases sprouting wisps of grass on wood tables hand-hewn by Košir and his father. The various different capabilities of the humble-mannered Košir quickly turn into evident. Once we completed our espresso, he led us up the mountain to his duck farm. In an outdated barn, he had organized a selection of cured meat and mushrooms — foraged by his household and pickled by his mom — beside a conveyable oven he had engineered himself, wherein he was baking a potato-and-cheese tart known as frika. 

At one level, Kosir left the barn to assemble the garnish. We adopted into a close-by area, watching as he whisked his fingers by the grass and picked yarrow fronds, pea greens, and thyme blossoms. I discovered from him that planting too many flowers in a backyard entices butterflies, which lay eggs that hatch into caterpillars, which eat greens; that potatoes want wind to develop, so Košir buys his from a buddy who grows them at a better altitude; that, as winters heat with local weather change, geese placed on much less fats, so whereas he used to slaughter his in November, he now waits till the climate will get colder. 

Once we had completed our nine-course lunch — beeswax “butter,” fava beans, trout, duck (in fact), fermented blueberry cream, all of it wealthy, homey, but refined — Košir got here to say goodbye. He was coated in spackle, having spent the afternoon on renovations. Quickly friends shall be in a position see into the kitchen and cellar, to witness how their meals is preserved and ready. “The way forward for gastronomy is in transparency,” he stated. 

For a small nation, Slovenia has a stunning breadth of ecological variety. There’s the Alpine area of the northwest, the place Dave and I had begun our journey and, south of there, the fertile Vipava Valley, identified for its wine and fruit. Farther south is the seaside and the northern a part of the Istrian Peninsula, whose panorama is harking back to Tuscany. The day earlier than we arrived in Ljubljana, we had visited the town of Maribor within the northeast, house of the oldest grape-bearing vine in Europe, the place we rented bikes and pedaled close to the Austrian border, over hills smelling of hay and roses. 

All through our journey, we needed to get as shut as potential to the origins of our meals, so one afternoon, in a pastoral valley close to Lake Bled, Dave and I met Danijela and Blaž Ambrožič at Kravlov Med, their honey farm. Beekeeping is a revered custom in Slovenia, and the enterprise is backed by the federal government. Danijela opened a window right into a hive, the place we watched because the queen deposited eggs into comb and employee bees fed and groomed her. “One bee is every little thing — builder, collector, guardian,” Danijela stated. 

There are 12,000 registered beekeepers within the nation, probably the most per capita on this planet. Not removed from the Ambrožič farm is the place Anton Janša, the daddy of contemporary apiculture, saved his hives within the 1770s, ultimately changing into well-known for his books on the topic. “We are saying, ‘No bees, no life,’ ” Danijela stated. Even locals who don’t preserve bees themselves appear to grasp their basic function within the ecosystem. Some years in the past, a younger boy had been out gathering mushrooms in a close-by forest when he discovered a comb clinging to the outer bark of a tree. Being so uncovered, he knew, the bees wouldn’t make it by the winter, so the boy instructed the Ambrožičs, who captured the swarm, reduce the hive off the tree, and introduced it house. 

In contrast to beekeeping, truffle looking is comparatively new to Slovenia. Histories are inclined to credit score the Sumerians with the beginnings of the follow. In Slovenia, it’s nearer to 100 years outdated, but a strong economic system has sprung up round it, and one may simply assume the truffle has lengthy been an important component of the delicacies.

Sooner or later we drove two hours south to the Istrian Peninsula, the place we spent an evening at Residence Gold Istra, a modest gostišče perched on a ridgeline with sweeping views of the Dragonja Valley. Just a few years in the past, a younger household bought the property and now presents truffle-hunting excursions adopted by seven-course meals of their tasting room. 

Our information was a buddy of the household: Jakob Benčič, who was taught the best way to hunt truffles by his father. Benčič can be a second-generation police officer, and regardless of having spent the earlier night time responding to noise complaints, he appeared recent, his beard carefully clipped. He had introduced with him an adorably keen border collie named Jano, the son of the perfect truffle-hunting canine the Benčičs have ever owned. 

Jano has a superb nostril however is “hyper,” Benčič stated, and has but to dwell as much as his mom’s status. We chased the canine down the hill from the residence right into a low-canopied forest, and inside a couple of minutes, he was pawing on the floor close to the bottom of an oak. Benčič scraped the soil with a trowel, gently in order to not puncture the truffle. When it emerged, it seemed like a cross between a potato and a rock, heavy when Benčič dropped it into my palm. 

Truffle graced the menu of virtually each restaurant we ate at in Slovenia, even after we least anticipated it. The following afternoon, within the shimmery seaside metropolis of Piran, Dave and I glanced at a map we’d been carrying for the reason that begin of our journey, on which the Milka workers had pinned their favourite eating places. There was just one in Piran — Rostelin — and we anticipated it to supply seafood, however after we arrived on the café on the sleepy sq., we discovered principally pasta and meat. 

“Ten occasions a day folks are available asking for calamari, however you’ll be able to’t get squid from the ocean right here,” our lanky chef, Darjan Murovec, stated, waving towards the Adriatic. He’d grown up in an residence throughout the sq. and, after a sojourn in Germany, had returned a couple of years earlier to open the restaurant. He needed to serve meals that was Istrian, and nothing was extra Istrian than pasta, he stated. We ordered the gnocchi and a neighborhood selection known as fuži, topped with truffle shavings. 

It felt good to circle again to the Julian Alps, the place we had begun, although by then we had reached the south of the vary, the place the turquoise Soča River spills from limestone crags into the fertile Soča Valley. We’d woken that morning to a deluge of rain, however it was our final day in Slovenia, so we determined to take a circuitous street into the mountains and had been rewarded with sunbeams cracking by clouds, sweeping throughout the sharp ridges. We hiked a number of miles, previous nettles and wild thyme, and, on the opposite facet of a ridge, noticed the storybook city of Drežnica. Seeing the city from above, I felt unusually satiated, having mapped the meals I ate onto its panorama. Then we descended again into the valley, the day all of a sudden sunny, and made our approach by the village of Kobarid to Hiša Franko.

In a 2017 interview, Ana Ros famous the hassle it takes for a creating nation like Slovenia to achieve culinary recognition. “All people travels for meals to Copenhagen, London, or Paris, however who is aware of the place Kobarid is?” she stated. 

From the surface, Hiša Franko is unassuming, tucked in opposition to the mountains, the grounds a riot of flowers and herbs. Our host, Dejan Vukašinoić, led us to our cozy room on the highest flooring, apologizing that Ros wouldn’t be there to greet us, as she was cooking in Tanzania. We learn books on our sunny deck till it was time for the aperitif, and a waiter led us to a small desk beside a creek lined with dandelions, the place I sipped a mushy, delicate martini made with olive oil. Lastly, it was time: we entered an ethereal eating room, the place the superbly choreographed workers offered us every with a pincushion of moss to wipe our fingers on, then delivered the primary dish: white asparagus on a button of smoky cream cheese, topped with a walnut that had been soaked in water and was as tender as if it had simply been plucked from a tree.

I had chosen the “funky” drink pairing, which promised an journey in fermentation. As I attempted Feo Amfora, a beer that had been fermented in wood barrels after which refermented with grape should, I seemed round. The restaurant was filled with {couples} from different nations. Its status had put it on the world map, and but the bottom its menu coated was, as ever, native: a corn beignet, fluffy like a doughnut, pocketed with trout roe and chive. A nest of asparagus and white strawberry on a salty yeast cream — the one salad for which I’ve ever been given a spoon. A potato baked right into a hay crust, to be cracked open like an egg. A tiny nest of tagliolini, crunchy with cacao nibs and truffle shavings. A wild-mushroom and forest-moss broth meant to evoke a wet stroll within the woods. This was meals with contradictions: New and outdated, unusual and acquainted. It wasn’t my house, however it tasted like house. 

The place to Keep and Eat

Gold Istra Residence 

Causes for staying at this eight-room gostišče on the Istrian Peninsula embrace the view of the Dragonja Valley, with its olive bushes, and the truffle-hunting excursions.

Gricˇ

Within the city of Šentjošt nad Horjulom, a half-hour’s drive from the capital, this farm-to-table expertise has two tasting-menu choices, which chef Luka Košir adjustments usually. In a single day lodging are coming quickly.

Hiša Denk

Near the town of Maribor, close to the Austrian border, this once-traditional household institution has been recast as a contemporary, Michelin-starred ode to high quality eating; it additionally has six visitor rooms.

Hiša Franko

The solely restaurant within the nation to earn three Michelin stars supplies a sensory overload of taste and colour that’s refined, but welcoming. Reserve an evening in one of many 10 cozy rooms to make use of as a base for touring the Soča Valley.

Landerik

Whereas every little thing is sweet, the star of the present at this Ljubljana restaurant is the šmorn, a dessert fabricated from caramelized chunks of bread topped with vanilla yogurt and apricot jam.

Milka

Maybe probably the most picturesque guesthouse in all of Slovenia, set on the fringe of the emerald Lake Jasna. Eat breakfast on the deck because the solar rises over the Julian Alps.

Open Kitchen 

The choices at this Friday meals competition in Ljubljana are limitless and dependably scrumptious. Highlights embrace the pork with crispy rinds at the Tremendous Hrust stall and the pastries from Pekarna Ana, Ana Ros’s bakery. 

Rostelin

Probably the perfect (and at all times house-made) pasta in Slovenia is served at this restaurant, on a quiet sq. within the coastal metropolis of Piran.

TaBar

A hip tapas spot within the heart of Ljubljana that provides dishes like crisp fried elderflower and king oyster mushrooms with dehydrated blueberry cream.

Zlata Ladjica Lodge

In Ljubljana’s Previous City, friends at this 15-room fashionable resort in a Seventeenth-century constructing can watch rowers glide by on the river under. It’s additionally a simple stroll to the metropolis’s greatest eating places.

Tips on how to E book

Scott Dunn

A crew of specialists at this high-end company can create customized journeys all through Slovenia, working with a community of native contacts to rearrange truffle foraging, cooking lessons, beekeeping classes, wine tastings — and safe even probably the most elusive dinner reservations.