Food and beverages

Pascal Aerssens, young Dutch student writing Tourist Guide to Slovenia (more photos)

Food
Slovenia has more than 1200 national dishes. Slovenian traditional dishes differ very much from region to region. It’s however not easy to find a traditional Slovenian dish like mlinci (pasta tatters) or ajdovi žganci (dish made from boiled cornmeal). If you wish to try traditional Slovenian dishes, the best places to go are gostilna or gostišče (local pubs). If you want to enjoy the food in a Slovenian way, you will have to eat slow, because in Slovenia slow and organic food rules. Slovenes normally eat three meals every day, with lunch being the most important.  

Sok (fruit juice), kava (coffee), or čaj (tea) and žemlja (a type of hard roll) are common for zajtrk (breakfast).

Lunch generally starts with juha (soup). It generally includes a meat dish, a starch dish (e.g. bread, pasta, dumplings or potatoes), vegetables and a salad (e.g. francoska solata, cubed potatoes and vegetables with mayonnaise). Bread almost always goes with both lunch and dinner. When a meal is taken at a restaurant, the waitress expects the diners to report the number bread slices they wish to eat during their meal. Most restaurants will serve homemade olive oil with their meals.

To drink at lunch or dinner, there generally is vino (wine), pivo (beer) or malinovec (a drink made with raspberry syrup).

Dinner is usually light. Salads and yoghurt, accompanied by leftovers from lunch, are characteristic. When invited to dinner, Slovenes consider it decent to bring small presents. Flowers and wine are usually given to the host, and sweets is offered to children. It is considered impolite to refuse any food that is offered, even if you don’t like it. So you better tell your host what you like, some days before visiting.

Eating at restaurants is considered luxurious by the Slovenes, so it is normally only done on special occasions and for celebrations. Nevertheless, many Slovenes do often have a meal at a gostilna or a gostišče (local pub). The traditional Sunday lunch in a local pub may include beef or chicken soup with homemade noodles, pork or veal roast, sautéed or roasted potatoes, salad and strudel for dessert.        

Young Slovenes may go out for pizza and like eating at fast food places. A very popular fast food dish is burek (a layered pie with cheese, meat or apples). You can buy it at most of the takeaway places.
You can eat fresh fish of a good quality throughout the country. Both, fresh water and salt water fish are served, e.g. pike, trout, scampi, squid and different kinds of perch. Most of them are grilled or fried.

The Slovenian cuisine has been strongly influenced by its neighbours. From Hungary there are palačinke (pancakes), paprikaš (chicken or beef stew) and golaž (goulash). Austria has put in dunajski zrezek (schnitzel), klobase (bangers) and zavitek (a kind of strudel). The ravioli žlikrofi is typical Italian. And čevapčiči (grilled minced meat) comes from the Balkan.

A Slovenian meal is not complete without a juha (soup), like goveja juha z rezanci (beef soup with thin egg noodles), gobova kremna juha (creamed mushroom soup) or a zelenjavna juha (vegetable soup).
Please don’t let pass trying potica (cake roll filled with dried fruit, walnuts and a range of herbs) or maybe you like gibanica even more (a pastry filled with walnuts, apple, poppy seeds and cheese and a cream topping). Another Slovene specialty is štruklji (cheese strudel), which is a terrific way to start a meal. Sliced raw onions mixed with pumpkinseed oil are a delicacy and are often served.

There is always special food on St. Martin's Day (11th of November). St Martin is the patron saint of wine, so his feast day is the day that grape juice officially becomes wine, and that is always celebrated. Red cabbage is prepared sweet and sour and a well roasted goose is traditional. Another unusual dish is mlinci (pasta tatters), that have been roasted with the goose.
And of course, previous year's wine and the new wine are both drunk!

Drinks
Wine is the main drink in Slovenia, and a big industry in the region surrounding Ptuj. Wine growing in Slovenia has very good results, because it lies on the southern hills of the Alps and touches the Mediterranean sea. And so it is blessed with climatic changeability from the north and the south. Very interesting in the Ptuj region is the practice of offering water to mix with the wine. This practice is not common in other regions to the west. Bottled water, either with or without bubbles, is offered along with wine. The amount of water in the wine is up to the drinker. In the cafes, a glass of homemade white wine will cost about € 0.75, while coffee will be several times more expensive.

The opening drink in the morning is usually sweetened herb tea. So you better taste it first, before adding sugar! The tea is often followed by very sweet, Turkish  coffee, which is boiled with sugar in a small pot with a long hold. The sediment is divided over the cups. It is usually served with cream, kava s smetano. It normally is offered in the morning but is available whole day long. Some slivovka (plum brandy) might be offered with the coffee as well. Slivovka can be offered at any time of the day since many locals make it themselves. There are also a lot of beekeepers in Slovenia, so you can buy homemade med everywhere. Offering a toast to everyone's health is considered polite.

Brezalkoholne pijače (soft drinks) are often available. Pivo (beer) is common and might be offered anywhere. Everyone has their preference for one of the national brands, either Laško or Union and there is a real beer rivalry. Laško is brewed in the town of Laško near Celje and has a green label with a set of mountain goat horns. The Union brewery is in Ljubljana.