Slovenian Restaurants Are Foraging Forests for Michelin-Star Dishes

I just ate hay, and I think I like it. I’m early into an evening at Michelin-three-star Hiša Franko in Slovenia’s Soča Valley when chef Ana Roš’s best-known dish comes out: the One-Euro Potato. Legend has it that an Italian critic once called self-taught chef Roš a talent in the “land of poor ingredients,” which prompted her to show just what she could do with the bounty of her homeland. Her wit also abounds: The One-Euro Potato is part of a roughly $380 three-hour culinary adventure. It has since earned her those coveted Michelin stars, an appearance on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, and second place at the 2025 Best Chef Awards in Milan. Though the dish in question isn’t particularly showy—made to look like an egg in a nest, it’s an alpine potato slow cooked in a hay crust, served with honey and sour cream—it’s now a hallmark of a hyper-seasonal, deeply personal experience that helped put Slovenian gastronomy on the map.

A country roughly the size of New Jersey, surrounded by Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia, Slovenia is officially a foodie destination. It now has as many Michelin stars as Greece (13, but who’s counting?), and the most immersive of these restaurants delivers a set of room keys with your reservation. Guests can extend their meal at Hiša Franko by staying in its charming 1861 guesthouse for the night. No TVs here, just creaky walls and windows opening onto the wild meadows and mountains. A four-hour drive east in the Goričko hills, Michelin Green Star chef Bine Volčič and wife, Katarina, serve family-style dinners and multicourse chef’s-table affairs at their residence, Monstera Estate. Need to work off dinner? Katarina leads yoga in the mornings.

In the Bavarian-looking village of Radovljica, Michelin-one-star Hiša Linhart invites guests to bunk in the beautifully renovated 500-year-old property of master chef Uroš Štefelin, whose tasting menus are born of the local valley. Finally, up in the Julian Alps in the swish ski-resort town Kranjska Gora, Svetozar Raspopovic (he goes by “Pope”) and his wife, Aleksandra, have decamped from the capital city of Ljubljana, where Pope was a celebrated restaurateur, to open a mountain home fit for a Bond movie. A giant metallic eagle sits above the garage of Chalet Sofija, protecting the Ferrari parked inside. It’s one of Slovenia’s most expensive stays (from about $1,370 a night). Each of the five rooms has a hot tub and a terrace with astounding views of the Špik mountain group.

But what really sets these properties apart is the nation’s natural resources and how the chefs use them. More than half of Slovenia is covered in forests, making it one of the most densely wooded places in the European Union—and an ideal spot to forage for ingredients.

“If you are standing on top of the mountain and you look around, you can see all the places from where we source,” Roš, of Hiša Franko, has said. Herbs and produce come from the on-site garden, nearby farms and producers, and via a lone forager named Miha, who gathers pounds of wild garlic, oxalis, elderflower, and whatever else is in season. The 39-year-old has been foraging since childhood, when he’d help his family collect herbs for omelets.

That early appreciation for quality produce has been lucrative for decades. Long before he provided ingredients for Michelin-starred kitchens, he would flip his mushrooms to Italians crossing the border to buy cheaper gas. “I would stand there and the Italians would go, ‘Oh, fungi, fungi!’ And I would sell out!” he says. Come to the guest house, and he might just show you a trick or two.

Top: Dishes at chef Ana Roš’s Michelin-three-star restaurant Hiša Franko (left) are finished with wild herbs foraged by her colleague Miha (right).