STARTERS
Signature dishes
Two-Michelin-starred Hiša Franko sits within a 19th-century building
times in a season, depending on what the surrounding environment provides, but the fl avour combinations always surprise. Recent dishes have included beef tongue pastrami with oyster, seaweed crystal, jalapeño and wild watercress; trout cured with fi g leaves, barley and elder blossom water, served with trout belly and fi g leave praline; and roasted koji bean and reduced whey dip with bee pollen ice cream, apricots, hydro honey and crispy bean skin. Roš is dedicated to local ingredients, and
it’s her ability to turn the simple into the sublime that sets Hiša Franko apart: diners are tasting the Soča Valley, but it’s very much through the prism of Ana Roš. The strength of Roš and her team is, she
says, “cooking things in the right season and working very closely with nature — with the territory, with foragers, with gardens. We have to be very creative. At the same time, very elastic and ready to change the dishes very quickly, because nature isn’t a supermarket where you can get everything every day. “When you eat my food, you always have
explosions of fl avours,” she adds. “You have all senses working all the time. This is a kitchen with guts. You might hear some people say they didn’t like it, but you’ll never hear anyone say it was forgettable.” When Roš was growing up, her parents were
very ambitious when it came to her and her sister’s future; the girls were signed up to do sports and dance and were expected to do well in school. “I never really had the chance when I was a kid to express myself,” Roš says. “I was
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expected to do some things, but I don’t really remember if anyone ever asked me, ‘Do you really want to do that?’” Roš’s fi rst big rebellion came at the age
of 18 when she dropped out of Slovenia’s national ski team. She expected a big reaction from her father, but he managed to accept it. However, when she abandoned the prospect of a diplomatic career, turning down a Slovenian government job off er in Brussels, he didn’t speak to her for six months. It’s all water under the bridge now. Roš’s passion for her chosen path suggests
she made the right decision. During our interview, her head chef brings over a new dish for her to try (she creates the dishes, while her head chef makes her vision a reality). It’s a potato, fermented in the same way that black garlic is fermented — heated slowly over the course of a few weeks — and served with smoked bone marrow emulsion, anchovies and pine nuts (black, also slightly fermented). “The bite I had just now, I swear, it’s the best
I’ve ever tasted,” she says “And no doubt next year, when we’re working on creating a new menu, I’m sure I’ll say that’s the best bite I’ve ever had, too.” It’s this philosophy that informs Roš’s plans
for the future. Ambitiously, she wants “to make the most amazing menu on the planet, to enjoy our work and to be happy: happy when we’re cooking, and happy when we’re serving, and then people will understand our food a lot better. I don’t want to compromise. I want to be who I am and cook from my heart and from my soul.”
WHERE’S THE MEAT This dish (pictured) is a nod to traditional Slovenian Sunday lunches, in which a piece of meat is roasted with carrots, onions and white wine, and simply left alone to slow cook. Normally, while some of the meat would be served at the table, many parts of the animal would go to waste. Here, however, offcuts from producing the rest of the menu (lamb, chicken and pork) are combined with aromatic herbs to create the sauce. Onion is cooked in that sauce and the dish is served on a roasted barley flour injera (a fermented Ethiopian flatbread), along with dark malted barley oil, cherry and linden leaf.
IMPRESSION OF CHARCUTERIE In this delicate starter, Roš showcases her unusual flavour combinations. One bite comprises pork liver pate served on a rye bread crisp, topped with squid and dried cabbage. The other is a hollowed-out radish, grown in the mountains, filled with pig’s heart and dressed with a roasted cabbage oil.
JAPANESE KNOTWEED SORBET & DECLINATIONS OF PEACH An invasive plant that’s considered a pest throughout Europe, Japanese knotweed is rarely used in cooking. In this sorbet, however, it provides a flavour somewhere between rhubarb, kiwi and green apple. Various iterations of locally grown peach (smoked, fresh, crisped) add texture.
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