In the countryside, there's no culture for fine dining.
People eat because they need to feed themselves.
So realizing fine dining
in a place that doesn't have this tradition is really very difficult.
The challenge was big.
That was not a touristic area, there were no restaurants around.
If you're motivated enough
and for us, the motivation was a struggle to survive,
then one day you may reach a goal
and the goal is being good enough that people are willing to travel to you
and hopefully you make them happy.
Ana Roš took over Hiša Franko with her husband Valter
after the two fell in love and inherited the house from Valter’s parents.
Today it’s a food destination
with a waiting list of up to six months
and dishes that people travel thousands of miles to try.
Hiša Franko in all its history, even before we took over the house,
has been a kind of a center of local life somehow.
People have been getting married here, they were celebrating births.
Today they are not celebrating marriages
but people still come because they bring in ingredients
which get into transformation through our hands.
It means that we are ambassadors of our land.
But, at the same time, for people who travel to us,
we can show not only our culture and history
but also the future.
We actually change the social aspect of the area.
Young people see the success of Hiša Franko as an example that
you can live, survive and be successful in such a remote valley.
When I was a child there were a few moments in my life
that became a kind of my DNA.
We had a little red boat, named after my sister,
and we would be going up on the open sea.
My mother was picking a lot of oysters.
She would be throwing them on the boat and then my father was opening them
and me and my sister like eating them
just like that, without lemon, without adding anything.
I think it influences a lot the way I cook.
Because I always go somehow back to those flavors.
A lot of dishes were born from mistakes.
Being self-taught gives you a different point of view on the material.
Our way of seeing the food, our way of seeing the service,
our way of seeing the restaurant
is different.
I'm happy I never did culinary schools,
because it gave me a possibility to establish a kitchen
that has a completely different perspective from a lot of other chefs.
There is a lot of intelligent chefs around the world who think
in a similar way that we think.
But I'm not inspired by anyone else.
I need to survive here.
This means listen to the nature, respect the nature,
and work on a small level.
Take from the nature only what you need,
and use it only in a season when it grows.
Please go with plums.
We follow it very strictly, we still have a lot to learn
but I believe that this philosophy
can be the future.
There is so much around us that people don't use and understand.
And I believe that in Hiša Franko, we are opening these new doors.
Slowly, step by step,
every year something new,
every year something more original.
And this requires from us really a lot of work.
I really believe that a good chef, a great chef,
a chef dreamer
is a chef who believes that he has a lot of things
that he can still do, to improve things
and to make things better.