Hiša Franko
Hiša Franko Review at-a-glance
Kobarid, Slovenia
Awards: 2 Michelin star, #38 worlds 50 best in 2019
Cost: €175 for many course tasting menu, optional wine pairing €80
+Ana Roš has developed a unique cooking style that focuses on highlighting her terrior without ascribing to any one culinary style
+The food is innovative and unlike anything, you will eat anywhere else
+Genuine, friendly hospitality instead of robotic servers that elevates the meal beyond just eating food at a table and makes an experience out of it
-A few of the dishes seemed to lack balance to me
Verdict: I was predisposed to dislike the cooking at Hiša Franko. The chef centric, story-telling driven style of cooking has never been my favorite. Despite this I could not help but love my meal. The setting is idyllic, the hospitality great, and the chef clearly communicates her perspective through the food and overall dining experience. I could quibble with some of the dishes where I thought the combinations did not quite work or one flavor was overly dominant but the overall experience at Hiša Franko transcends just what is put on the plate. If I am ever in the area again I would happily revisit and you should too if you ever find yourself within a few hours drive of the restaurant.
Should you go?: If you are in the area, definitely. If you are making the trip from many hours away? Go if you are a lover of good hospitality and hyper-local sourcing over luxury ingredients. Or go if you are just looking for a great time and biodynamic wines. Basically go unless you are feverently against anything that isn’t classical cooking.
Rating: 94.5/100
Value: 16.5/20
Hiša Franko & Ana Roš
Hiša Franko is the most internationally accomplished restaurant in Slovenia, earning two Michelin stars and placing 38th in the 2019 Worlds 50 Best list. The story of Hiša Franko and its chef Ana Roš is well documented in a Chef’s Table episode that is worth watching. In short, Ana met her husband, Valter Kramer (who runs the wine and cheese program) while dining at Hisa Franko. After the restaurant was left to Valter, Ana took over the kitchen despite no formal training. This initial transition phase was rocky and the restaurant struggled for customers as Roš had not yet developed her unique culinary style that has earned the restaurant so many accolades. It was during this phase Roš and her husband decided to visit some of the best restaurants in Europe where they began to draw inspiration for the food that is served at Hiša Franko today.
Ana Roš’s food is hard to categorize. It does not ascribe to any one culinary philosophy or style but seems to borrow techniques from all over the world - the meal featured a taco, a beautiful buerre blanc and even a beignet to name a few examples. While the cooking styles are not consistent, the terrior of the products is rooted firmly in the area surrounding the restaurant. This combination of local products and global techniques creates a rare meal that is truly different than everything else I have experienced.
The restaurant itself is more or less in the middle of nowhere in Kobarid, Slovenia. We drove from Lake Bled which was a few hours drive by car through windy mountain roads with many great views. Given the remote location, I highly recommend staying in the area for a day or two. In addition to Hiša Franko, there is a ton of natural beauty with the Soča river, Tomlin gorge, and Slap Kozjak all worth a visit.
Only one lengthy tasting menu is offered at €175 which is one the pricey side for Slovenia but a steal when you compare to other countries and consider the amount of effort that was put into the meal. As an added bonus, wine by the glass and water did not see the absurd mark-ups you get at other restaurants. I did not see a wine by the glass menu but asked them to pair the meal with three glasses and the total price of water and 3 glasses of wine were under €20.
In addition to the restaurant, Hiša Franko operates as a bed and breakfast with a handful of rooms for those that do not want to drive home after the meal. Prices are around €170 / night and much like the restaurant this is quite a lot of money for a room in Slovenia but a good value compared to hotels featuring Michelin star restaurants in other countries. There were some mixed reviews on the hotel experience online so we ended up staying at the nearby Guesthouse Šterk which was ~€80 a night and featured great views of the Soča river.
What I ate at Hiša Franko
The first set of nibbles all came on one plate that had three bites: cured sardine, seaweed, black lemon, a plantago taco and wild plants, and an apricot tartlet, baby carrot, blue cheese. This was a very strong plate, with each bite being distinctive on its own and following a logical progression from bite to bite. The tartlet in particular was a favorite, the bright apricot going great with the blue cheese and the crust being nice and crisp.
The next plate had two small finger foods - first, a dish labeled “celaric as a goat cottage cheese pizza” was exactly as described being more or less a mini pizza made out of fresh local ingredients and celeriac as the crust. The second was my favorite of the finger foods, Rosette with fava beans, local pit cheese, rose and walnuts. Besides the presentation which was wonderful, all the individual components were top notch - the rosette perfectly crisp, the fava beans having a remarkable flavor and the use of rose being subtle and surprising.
A somewhat elaborate presentation followed with potato cooked in hay and tahini style local yogurt. The potato was delivered still encased in its hay crust with guests urged to use their hands to pull it out and get a good smell of the hay before combining it with the tahini yogurt. A cool presentation and the hay had a nice flavor but in the end, the result did not leave the potato with a stunning flavor. The last finger food was a porcini beignet served piping hot from the kitchen and having a nice earthy porcini filling.
The first proper course was a very clever cold almond soup with compressed peaches and basil seeds. This was a worthy follow-up to the finger foods and reminded me a bit of a reimagined version of the classic combination of burrata, tomato, and basil. It was hard to find any fault in this course with the kitchen thinking of anything, even serving the peaches just a tad before peak ripeness so they added a bit of texture to the dish. As a rule for me, I hate cold soups but loved this one.
Next course was a very interesting combination of roasted green tea consommé, with zucchini and Adriatic tuna fish. The dish had some interesting components with the green tea consommé being delicate and flavorful and the kitchen using coriander seeds, a first for me, which added a nice burst of flavor. However, while I can’t quite put my finger on why, the tuna just fell a little bit flat for me but that I think is more personal preference than any fault of the kitchen.
Hisa Franko and Ana Ros are known to produce some great pasta dishes so I was really excited for this course - pasta filled with suckling pig from the Krskopoje breed, cherries, elder blossom, wild horseradish. This was a very well-thought-out creative dish that fell just short of perfection. The pasta was made of cacao and filled with a rich mixture of local suckling pig and paired with a flavorful cherry sauce. Everything worked in harmony, the filling being balanced out by the slightly bitter cacao and the sweet cherries. Bringing it all together was wild horseradish grated tableside. Given the sharpness of the ingredient, it would have been better to add the horseradish in the kitchen to make sure the perfect amount is included - I found it a tad overpowering but a smart dish none the less.
The main fish dish was labeled ‘trilogy of trout’ and used the entire fish to create a main dish of trout fillet with beurre blanc, poppy seeds, and sour cherries as well as accompanying bites of trout skin with trout belly emulsions and liver bottarga and a verbena scented trout consomme, kaffir lime. The main portion of this dish was a real powerhouse - a beautiful (although very small) fillet of trout from the nearby Soča river and a textbook beurre blanc balanced out by the cherries. The beurre blanc, in particular, showed Ros’s mastery of French technique while also highlighting one of the most local ingredients possible in the trout (the marble trout in the Soča river can only be found in a handful of drainage basins from the Adriatic sea). Outside of the main fillet the other components were fine and showed the kitchen can utilize the entire fish but the fillet composition was the real star. A star dish by Ana Roš and reason enough to visit Hiša Franko by itself.
The transition to meat started with a roasted corn tortilla with dreznica lamb tartar, wild mustard and fake guacamole of broccoli and lavage. This was another example of Ana Ros applying techniques learned around the globe to ingredients indigenous to her region. This was a nice dish, each component well made but it was but jarring to see a taco come up in this portion of the meal (as well as switching back to raw protein after the cooked trout). Perhaps sequencing would have been better earlier in the menu?
Main course was roebuck (European deer) paired with a garum based sauce and wild berries. This was one of the least successful dishes of the meal for me. A very paired down dish on a comically large plate, it was served with instructions to combine the sauce, buck and berries in each bite. Unfortunately, this did not taste very balanced with the sourness of the berries completely blowing away the flavor of the sauce and the meat. Ignoring the preserved berries, the meat with the sauce was pleasant enough. Garum is an ancient Roman fermented fish sauce that appears to be having a bit of culinary renaissance (it was also featured heavily at my meal at Rutz a few months earlier). In the past, I have found it to be overpowering, but it was nicely restrained here and went well with the buck.
A pre-dessert of Japanese knotweed sorbet and sparkling cider fit well with the ethos of Hisa Franko and Ana Ros. Knotweed is one of the most invasive species of plants in the world so this kitchen decided to turn it into a sorbet which worked very well (even if I don’t think it will be replacing more traditional ice cream flavors anytime soon). The sparkling cider was also a real joy - one of the tables enjoyed it so much they ordered a glass of champagne to mix it with to make it into a cocktail.
Tomlin cheese mochi filled with pear butter and elder blossom vinegar and hazelnuts sounded peculiar but the mochi portion of the dish actually worked very well, the cheese and pear butter going great together. Sadly, the little shot of vinegar on the side I had some trouble with. The first two sips had very little heat but the third completely blew away the palate with an overwhelming heat from the vinegar. I am not sure if this was intended or the mixture had just separated but was not very pleasant.
The main dessert was a combination of sour milk with pinus mugo cones ice cream and dry plums. This had a good interplay of textures and provided a nice and refreshing end to the meal and was actually one of the few times I did not mind the incorporation of pine cones into my dessert. Ana Ros proving she can do pastry at Hisa Franko too.
Lastly, there was a trio of cheese nibbles using local cheese which certainly won’t replace a classic cheese board anytime soon but provided a good end and a fitting segway into the tour of the cheese and wine cellar.
Stray thoughts
The wine program at Hisa Franko is a real treat. It is focused on Slovenian wines, mostly of biodynamic and skin contact variety. This fits with the ethos of the restaurant and lets you try some interesting wines that you will not find at even the deepest wine cellars in other Michelin starred restaurants. As a bonus, while the wine pairing pricing was not particularly kind (€85), pricing by the glass was €5-8 per glass. This was the first time I received a bill at the end of a Michelin restaurant and was actually surprised by how low it was vs how high.
As mentioned at the start, Ana Ros and her team at Hisa Franko exude hospitality. This is one of the rare meals where the setting and service are so good it transcends what is on the plate. From Ana visiting the tables to the tour of the wine and cheese cellars, or the kitchen visit where they talk to you for as long as you want, Hisa Franko provides an experience that does not end at the table.