Off to Dinner

By Bea
When telling friends of our proposed route and our plan to pop into Slovenia for dinner, some thought we were mad, those who knew us well, didn’t think twice! (Probably still thought it, just politely didn’t verbalise it)

The time had arrived! With the help of a good foodie friend we managed to get a last minute booking at Hisa Franko, a restaurant owned by Chef Ana Ros. We first learnt of Ana Ros on a series on Netflix. Her story is amazing. She trained as an alpine skier and was on the national team but decided against that as a career, went to university to study Diplomacy. Her husband, Valter’s parents owned a restaurant and retired. She and her husband decided to take over the restaurant, much to her parents disgust. Ana and Valter tried to convince the current chef to try new recipes and broaden his skills but it didn’t work out and he left, so Ana took over the kitchen - with no cooking experience!

Now she and her restaurant have won many awards, including Worlds Best Female Chef 2017. We were fortunate enough to hear Ana speak last year at the ‘Women in Gastronomy’ event in Bangkok (arranged by the same foodie friend), she came across even more passionate and caring than on Netflix. We got the chance to speak to her at a post event cocktail party where we discussed Slovenia (and ice hockey) and our hope, one day, to visit her restaurant. I’m sure she’s heard it a thousand times, how people would love to get to her restaurant... but we finally did!

We crossed the Slovenian border early morning and as it was only 2.5 hours to the small town where the restaurant is located, we had plenty of time to explore. We first stopped at the port town of Koper. It is a small ‘old town’ with a few historical buildings, however as this is the only ocean access for Slovenia, it is dominated by its large port, an important and busy hub. We grabbed a light lunch and continued on. There were no ‘iconic tourist towns’ along the way rather the area was all about the scenery, so instead of taking the tollway, we followed smaller roads through the wineries and olive groves of the attractive Vipava valley.

We stopped at a local winery then realised it was just someone’s house. The lady of the house came out to greet us, we asked about her “vino”... she was very friendly, spoke little English but was eager to let us taste her wine. She ushered us into a small, rundown, stone outbuilding, inside there were no wine bottles in site. Just 10 large stainless steel wine vats, with a A4 sign taped to one listing the varieties and price per litre! We indicated from this list the ones we would like to try, she then went to the vats and poured the glasses straight from them!!

We tasted of a few and surprisingly they were quite drinkable. When we asked she confirmed that yes the price was 1.80 euro per 1 litre or 2.00 euros for premium stuff! We couldn't help but laugh. We ordered a red, white and rose. Whilst we were wondering how she was going to bottle it, she disappeared behind the door and grabbed three 1.5L recycled soft drink bottles. Classic!! She filled up all three. So for 8 euros we walked out with 4.5L of wine!!

Okay, only 5 more hours until our reservation, we drove along the valley taking in the gorgeous views and cute tiny towns as we passed through. Mid afternoon we realised we were right alongside the Italian border so at the next roundabout we took the third exit rather than the second and a minute later we were Italy - time for a coffee - as you do!

We tried to park, but many of the roads were blocked off. We eventually found a spot to park the van and walked back into the town area. It seemed they were setting up for some kind of festival. We sat and had a coffee - yes great coffee, worth the trip all the way to Italy. We took a walk around the town and stopped to talk to one of the vendors setting up. The lady spoke good English and explained to us it was a food festival starting tonight (Thursday) and going until midnight on Sunday. Okay, yes, of course we were going to come back this way!

On the road again we continued our pilgrimage to the restaurant. We came to a nice car park, overlooking a river only about 40 minutes from the restaurant and decided to stop and have a couple of hours rest before changing into our dining attire. (Not that special given it was made up of stuff from our back packs).

We got to the restaurant a little early, had a drink whilst we waited for other diners to arrive. Being a degustation menu, the restaurant did two sittings.

The food was everything and more than what we had expected. To be honest, I had started to worry that in the anticipation of it all, it was going to disappoint me. I certainly didn’t have to worry. Everything was perfect. The restaurant was situated in a gorgeous farming village, the decor was modern and open, the service was friendly and inviting and the food was just sensational.

Her menu is traditional Slovenian food with a modern twist using local ingredients. It was an extensive degustation menu comprising of 5 dishes for the appetisers; an incredible plate of spelt sour bread with molasses, cultured butter with bee pollen; then 10 savoury dishes and 2 deserts, with an optional dish at the end of Tolmin cheese, Valter matures his own cheese in a dedicated cheese cave.

It was hard to pick favourites, as all dishes were flavourful, textured and perfectly balanced. Dishes such as pulled Dreznica lamb and crab wrap in a lamb broth with an egg yolk filled with anchovy cream, were to die for... when you put the egg yolk in your mouth it just exploded with flavour. I think that was my favourite or no.. was it the ‘compe s skuto’- a fermented cheese and smoked chocolate served with a hay wrapped baked potato (that was not for desert, but an appetiser), or the ‘plantago taco’ with wild plants, elder blossom and hazelnut miso. Just too hard to choose.

Pete’s favourites was basically “lamb donuts”.. yes lamb donuts!... lamb brain and preserved cranberry bigne. It was either that or the fact one of the deserts was pork - yes pork for desert! Parsnip, apple, walnut and pork crackling dumpling glazed with pork fat. Smoked pork creme brûlée, sun dried plums and horseradish. Admittedly that was pretty good!

We were so impressed with the menu and the incredible combinations of ingredients in each dish, certainly up there as one of our best dining experiences ever.
After dinner, Ana took us into kitchen to meet the staff who then showed us around the cheese room (I was in heaven in there!).
Bloated and smiling we waddled out to the van which Ana had kindly allowed us to camp in their car park. I think that has set a precedence- after eating a great meal, it was so good to have a bed in the back of the car!

If anyone is planning a trip to Slovenia (and you should), you definitely need to make the effort and treat yourselves to dinner at Hisa Franko. They also have rooms were you can stay the night - worth the splurge! https://www.hisafranko.com/en/

The next morning we woke to a beautiful scene of green farmlands and rolling hills over which a light mist had settled. We went inside, had a coffee and said our goodbyes before making our way toward Ljubljana. The drive was truly spectacular. The scenery was breathtaking, large hills and valleys, winding rivers, fly fishermen and cute towns. We fell in love with Slovenia.

We arrived in Ljubljana mid morning, found a campsite about 20 minutes walk from the centre. It was basically a gravel parking area across the road from the restaurant who owned it. They charged 10 euros to stay or free if we had a meal at the restaurant. So we had lunch there then walked into town.

Imagine if Paris was a small Italian city inhabited by hip ‘cafe urbanites’ with a a foodie flair- that is Ljubljana Its a very picturesque town but its the young urban vibe that really strikes you. It’s historical buildings, cultural attractions are intermingled with trendy cafes and restaurants. We wandered the streets taking in the tourist hotspots Peresen Monument, cool cafe, Triple Bridge, hip restaurant, Robba Fountain, avant- guard gelatoria, Cathedral of St Nichola, tourists with Aperol spritz (oh well it isn’t perfect,... but close) and of course the Central Market.

One of the staff at Hisa Franko told us about the ‘Open Kitchen’. This is an open air food court where local restaurants showcase their food, we had to seek it out. It was actually pretty cool, its close to restaurant standard not street stall style at all. They had so much to choose from. After a mid afternoon snack of a Turkish dish of spiced chicken and a local dumpling dish, we decided to continue our sightseeing, coming back later for dinner.

We visited a few more sights including the Dragon Bridge, the Castle, and an Aperol spritz, hey we’re tourists! By dinner time the Open Kitchen was heaving, bustling with activity. We ordered a pulled pork and coleslaw from one place, a paella from another, a couple of glasses of wine from a third, then sat down on the steps of the adjacent cathedral to enjoy our food and take in the atmosphere, it is very cool! We strolled the streets a little more, admiring the town and just really enjoying the vibe this city on the way back to the van.

The next morning was AFL Grand Final day. Unfortunately for us, the game started at 6.30AM... needless to say, despite best intentions, we didn’t get to see much of the pre-game entertainment. We laid in bed watching the start of the game with a coffee, then at half time Pete made some pretty damn good breakfast burgers - of course we had to have some form of “footy food”. Just before three quarter time, our data ran out on the SIM card!! No Wifi in this camping spot either. Too basic for that! We made a quick dash outside to see what wifi we could get, we knew the restaurant over the road had free wifi but it was too early for them to be open. We found that, if we sat in a certain spot, we could get the City Free Wifi but only strong enough to use on the phone. So we sat on the sidewalk by the restaurant and watched the last quarter of the game on the phone. A memorable experience I suppose! In the end the Tigers flogged GWS so it wasn’t really a great game.

Time to head back to Italy for the food festival.

We crossed the border, with just a short interruption while the Italian border police checked out our papers. From our previous visit we knew it would be difficult to find a place to park, we eventually managed to find a car parking spot in a very large car park near the border crossing.

Every year for the past 16 years, the town of Gorizia in Italy has held the “Gusti Di Frontiera” food festival. For 4 nights and 3 days, from 10am to 3am, the majority of the streets of the old town are all shut down and divided into 20 distinct geographical villages. Over 400 stands representing 50 countries.

We walked to the start of the festival area. OMG it was massive. There were so many streets lined with food and drink stalls. Every turn brought another full street, everywhere as far as the eye could see lines of stalls and heaving with people, we had died and gone to foodie heaven!

How to tackle this mammoth exercise!? We just started to wander street by street. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t behaving and it rained off and on throughout the day. Thankfully we were appropriately attired but felt sorry for the stall holders trying to cook on open fires and keep their food displays from going soggy! The weather however didn’t dampen spirits of the people enjoying the festivities.

At lunch time, we dove in- our first purchase was a barbecued octopus pita burger with salad greens and buratta, a very tasty introduction to the festival. We continued wandering the streets having a few more dishes. It was sometimes difficult to determine what the dishes were as nothing was in English and very little English was spoken. However, if it looked good who cares!

Whilst walking around we found the tourist bureau and asked about a campsite, as we intended to come back to the festival in the evening and wanted somewhere close that we could walk home to. The staff were apologetic saying during the festival time it was almost impossible to get parking. The only place they knew of was a very large car park near the border. Score!! That was where we had parked the van. We could continue our food adventure.

We walked a bit more surveying the stalls thinking about what to have that night. We came across the Great Britain section and stopped at the Rugby tent to check whether they were telecasting the Australian game the next day. The couple who ran the stall were super friendly and spoke good English. They told us about a county touch Rugby event happening just down the street so we headed to the ground to watch before heading back to the van to rest recharge before tackling the festival in the evening.

By the time we returned to the festival the weather had cleared up and more people had arrived, ready to party the night away. We found a lot more streets and alleys we hadn’t discovered during the day. It was very well organised and laid out. I think Pete’s favourite area had to be the America’s village where, vast quantities of lamb, beef or pork were being slowly barbecued over huge fire pits.

You just walked through clouds of delicious aromas! We visited various stalls sampling, barbecued steak, lamb ribs and my favourite a variety of fried, crumbed stuffed olives oh and a few local craft brews. The local breweries had an amazing variety of set ups including a bicycle, helicopter, combi, beer ambulance and our favourite, a campervan!

By 11pm we were stuffed so decided to call it quits stopping for a night cap on the way out, there was a funky, jazz band playing then a DJ, so a couple of night caps later we were still there. A group of locals about our age, were partying at the end of our table, the girls were dancing on the street, the guys were standing around chatting. One of the guys bought a bottle of Dom Perignon and presented us with a glass - well who are we to be rude and not accept! I ended up joining the girls dancing on the street, whilst Pete chatted to the guys (one operated a hotel). Just after 1am we stumbled back to our van. Leaving the girls to dance the night (morning) away.

We woke to find our car park was still dotted with the cars of those who didn’t make the drive home. We planned to visit some sites, grab some lunch at the festival and head off. We walked into the festival area as the cleanup continued and the stalls were re-firing and the hunks of meat were already on the grills.

The guys we saw going strong at midnight were now back behind the grills and had been for at least a couple of hours. Pete got talking to one of the staff- This food circus rolls across Italy all summer to the various festivals, these aren’t small set ups either- full mobile restaurants, big rigs, trailer length grills, 10s of staff each. They were packing up on Monday and would be set up in at the next festival starting Thursday. Now that is cooking it tough.

We sat down for a coffee, picked up a pastry at the “French” section of the festival then headed up the hill to visit the castle. During the festival the council had waived the entry fee for the tourist attractions. The castle is accessed by a steep walk up the hill. You are greeted by a wonderful view of the town and the hills across to Slovenia.

The construction of the castle can be dated back to about 1146, with many reconstructions since. The first main reconstruction dates back to 1307 and that is the date on the seal at the entrance. At the end of WWI the castle unfortunately was just a mere ruin. It was again rebuilt in 1937. In 1943 the castle was occupied by the German troops. Today the castle is a medieval design in the shape of a pentagon, the rooms are furnished with period furniture.

We headed back to the festival and came across an “Australian” stall stuck in the “African Qtr” seriously! They were offering meat pies, at 8.00euros, no thanks. We got a little suspicious of authenticity when none of the staff spoke English and they offered Aussie delicacies Kangaroo, Emu and Zebra! in pitas! The queue for the ‘Kangaroo’, however, was quite long so they were doing something right. We settled for freshly carved prosciutto on fresh bread from a local stall then off to the Argentinian section for some barbecued beef ribs. Delicious.

It was time to say goodbye to the festival... ok, one last bite.... a cannoli. We couldn’t leave Italy without trying one of these traditional deserts could we? It was so good, crispy, freshly filled with a vanilla custard cream and dusted with pistachios.
Delicious.

Schengen, days were ticking down, time to head back to Croatia.